


These Cuts Of Mine

by nagia



Series: Hard Times [2]
Category: Rurouni Kenshin
Genre: F/M, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-18
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:06:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some secrets don't stay hidden, and now Aoshi knows Misao's. A story of regret, retribution, and out-and-out vengeance. Companion piece and sequel to "Hard Times."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. though her voice would be merry

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Daughter Figure](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1598) by Western Ink. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for warnings.

i.

Not all the memories of the time they spent raising Misao are good. Even years later, Aoshi shies away from a few. He's buried this one under other unpleasant memories, but recent events have him re-examining it:

When Misao was seven, she cried in her sleep. It happened sometimes; he recalls his stomach clenching at the sight, but he doesn't recall being surprised.

She woke shaking and gasping.

Though she turned to Hannya for comfort, it was Shikijou who gave her answers. He took her a little away from the rest of them. It gave at least the illusion of privacy, though they could all still hear the conversation.

"It's been years," she said. "I thought it was over!"

"It's never over."

"But it ended years ago!"

"That doesn't make it over."

Aoshi remembers drifting silently, then, flitting between trees until he could see her. If he couldn't bear being the one to teach her this, he would at least see it done. Or so he told himself.

He watched Shikijou stretch to pluck a leaf from a short tree. The leaf was bright green with spring. In a few months's time, she would be eight.

Shikijou passed the leaf to her. She accepted it with both hands, her head tilted, her brows furrowed in a confused pout.

Shikijou waited a few moments. For all his muscles, for all his weight, he struck fast. Just seconds after she'd accepted the odd gift, he painstakingly ripped a piece of the leaf away.

Misao blinked. She looked down to the ragged scrap of green left in her hand, then back up at Shikijou's closed fist.

"Why did you do that?"

Shikijou held his fist at an angle. After a moment, he opened his fingers, let the leaf fall. Rather than flutter to the ground, the leaf sailed away on a breeze.

"When you see things, like what you saw with your parents, it takes a piece of you."

"And you can't ever get the piece back, so it's never over?"

Looking back, Aoshi sees that moment as a touchstone for all the others. It's the moment she first began to understand.

In the moment, though, in the moment that reassures him of what he protects, and torments him for what he failed, he only wanted to turn back time.

He still wants to turn back time.

* * *

ii.

This soon after sunset, when long shadows obscure the city and vermin -- human or otherwise -- skulk about, the streets look empty. He turns a corner cautiously, approaching the Shirobeko from the opposite direction of the shrine, and sees a scrap of purple and blue.

He shifts his gaze in that direction, automatically seeking the color of the Oniwabanshuu. He catches only the darting flicker of a long, long braid.

He follows without a second thought.

She traces her way through Kyoto unerringly, with neither delays nor side-trips. She keeps her pace steady; soon enough, she pauses in front of the Aoi-ya.

Aoshi stops a few paces behind.

She stands still a while with her head tilted back. Even from his distance, he can tell that she's drinking in the sight of the Aoi-ya.

Seconds pass by, lengthen into minutes. And then she moves forward. He watches her spider-crawl the Aoi-ya walls, her motions certain and economical.

He wants to ask what she's doing, why she's doing it. But he's not sure she could explain. He's not sure he would understand if she did.

So he watches her pull a broken shingle from the roof. He traces her path with his eyes as she descends. A mixture of regret, of sorrow, of pride tightens the inside of his chest as he follows her back to the Shirobeko.

It's not difficult to slide her door open without her hearing.

She wraps the tile in a length of stained, tattered cloth. It's barely more than a bundle of rags.

But Aoshi's seen too much, been Oniwabanshuu too long, not to recognize a blood-stained uniform.

He closes her door in the same instant she closes the chest. He has trespassed. Whatever his intentions, this was a betrayal of trust.

He cycles through the possible meanings, the possible origins, of that ruined uniform on the way back to his room. He doesn't like anything he comes up with.

* * *

iii.

The dissatisfaction at invading Misao's privacy lingers sour. He contemplates apologizing, but cannot convince himself to acknowledge the possibilities circling in his head. And he knows: if he apologizes, he'll ask. If he asks, she'll tell him -- whether or not she's ready.

He will not hurt her in that way. He doesn't ask. He doesn't apologize.

But still, the worries and the regrets stay with him.

They only worsen when she brings him bedding for his futon. She squeaks, blushes, as he takes what will be his bed from her hand. It would amuse him, would warm him low and smooth, if he wasn't simultaneously seeing her wrap a broken shingle in a ruined uniform and collapse to her knees after he nearly killed Okina.

She turns to go and he lets her.

Almost.

He says her name, softly. But she immediately snaps into a half-turn, looks up at him with a fragile expression; he's suddenly struck by the image of jerking a dog's leash.

"Aoshi-sama?"

"The roof tile. Why keep it?"

It's not until she smiles at him, open and free as she's always been, that the worry rests.

"I learned things and met people worth remembering."

The stone knot of new sins eases.

* * *

iv.

Aoshi knows something is wrong when she's so tired she's all but stumbling and tries to tell him that she can keep going. Misao trembles as they enter the town's only inn, and his certainty only grows. Dread writhes in his stomach.

He isn't sure what to expect, so he stops trying to plan for possibilities and just starts planning contingencies. The gruffly well-intended condescension of the innkeep manages to startle him nonetheless.

"Good for you, travelling with a bit more protection these days."

She needed it? Of course she needed it; she's young, she's female, she was unaccompanied. But the way the old woman says it --

He writes it off as an old woman's bitterness at her children.

Until, in the midst of her chatter, she adds, "My only girl wasn't quite so lucky as yours here."

His breath freezes in his lungs for an instant. He wants to demand she explain herself. Instead he only turns to watch her closely.

"She died three years ago. And then I met yours about a year after that. Nice child. It's always the nice ones, really."

Aoshi begins fitting pieces together: Misao hates this town. Misao was here two years ago. Misao is lucky to be alive. Misao has a bloodstained tatter of a uniform hidden away in her room.

He doesn't like where those pieces lead him. The old woman warns Misao to stay off the streets and that's just another piece, clicking into awful place inside his head. He clenches his hands into fists, then relaxes when Misao turns to look at him.

His anger is not for her. He will not frighten her with it.

He never wants her to be afraid again.

* * *

v.

Even with his heart still in his chest and every muscle aching to destroy whatever has left Misao so afraid of this place, he doesn't ask. If he asks, she'll tell him.

If his suspicions are right, she needs privacy. She needs space.

He'll give it to her.

Through the night, they fight over the shutter, though they never exchange words about it. It's a hot, sticky night. He wants the shutter open to let the breeze in, to better hear the town's traffic. For some reason, she wants it closed.

She closes it once he's laid out the futons, then picks her way through perfect darkness across the room. She must be navigating by ear; she never brushes against him, never missteps.

He opens it a crack after her breathing has evened into sleep.

He wakes, covered in a layer of sweat. He frowns as he rises from bed. His yukata sticks to his skin; he has to shrug his shoulders more than once to dislodge it.

He cracks the window again. In the hazy moonlight, the town looks peaceful. Just a sleepy, foggy village in summer. Nothing threatening here.

Misao stirs in her sleep. The sound of her movement draws his attention. She whimpers low in her throat and he's all but riveted. She never was a neat sleeper, and tonight's no exception. At some point, she cast aside her blankets, and now tosses and turns on a sparse futon.

She kicks out in her sleep. It's a harsh, fast jerk of her right leg. It's clearly not a normal aimless sleep-motion; her kick has purpose, even if that purpose only exists in her dream.

Despite whatever purpose it served her, it parts her yukata. Fabric slides along her legs with a whispering sound.

Aoshi's eyes trace the line of her ankle, the curve and swell of her calf, the smooth expanse of her thigh. When she moves again, he tries to tear his gaze away. He should return to bed. He should stop stealing glances of --

Is that a shadow, or is that...?

A scar, he realizes. A blade scar: one medium-long, mostly straight line, thick at one end but gradually thinning. It starts on the very inside of her right thigh and stops halfway down.

Someone stuck a knife in her thigh and dragged it down. He's seen too much not to know.

He crosses the room, sorts through her blankets until he finds the thinnest. She stirs without waking as he spreads the sheet over her.

Before he returns to bed, he closes the shutter.

* * *

v.

Aoshi wakes early, even by his usual standards. Fragments of last night's nightmares rattle around his thoughts, shifting like ice floes, crashing against each other. Each fragmented image is uniquely horrifying.

He forces himself to breathe slowly, deeply. His lungs ache for more air, even though he knows he's getting plenty. It's a strangling feeling inside his chest.

So he closes his eyes and examines each image, as dispassionately as he can, to determine what disturbs him and set it aside. Omasu, gagged, with candlewax dripping along her legs, eyes wide and face pale from the pain. Shikijou, his arms bearing so many cuts from the battle that the skin hangs like ribbons. Shiro and Kuro, each bent to one knee, each bound to the decapitated and maggoty corpse of an informant.

Hyottoko retching into a barrel after a mishap with an oil refil, his eyes wide in fear and horror and, yes, the burning.

Hannya, pale and cold and still, but clearly satisfied with his death.

Okon, eyes glazed, face battered, blood dripping between her thighs, breathing hitched from broken ribs, found with her legs forced apart.

Disturbing as each is, the nightmares aren't new. He's been dreaming horrors for years.

He opens his eyes again, rolls enough to nudge the window shutter with his foot. It opens easily. Pre-dawn light begins to seep into the room.

He rolls back, half-heartedly re-adjusts his blankets as he turns to face Misao. Her sleep has finally eased. She rests peacefully, her breathing smooth and even, her face relaxed.

Tonight was her debut in the theater of his nightmares. He closes his eyes, tries to examine the fragments objectively. But the conjectures his mind created are torturous. He cannot think of her writhing to escape some faceless captor's grasp without his stomach churning. The image of a knife plunging into her thigh, dragging along her skin while blood wells to follow, leaves him light-headed with despair, lights fury in his chest, makes his hands shake with the desire to kill.

He opens his eyes to watch her sleep. A smile begins to curl along her lips, curving teasingly, and he wonders what she sees. He focuses on her smile, times his breaths to match hers.

The tightness in his chest, the ache of strangulation, finally subsides.

He watches her wake, too. Her eyes drift open, blink a few times. She yawns, lifting a hand to half-cover her mouth.

He halfway mourns the loss of her sleeping smile, but she smiles when she sees him, and it's a full one. Beshimi once remarked that Misao could pour a year's worth of joy into a second's curve of her mouth.

Aoshi fully agrees.

Now that she's awake, he should start the day. He sits up, shakes his head as if that will cast aside the remains of the night.

He can pinpoint the exact instant she realizes he's awake: her eyes widen, her smile disappears as her lips part in surprise. She begins to blush.

"Were you... waiting for me to wake up?" Her voice is tentative, almost shy.

"No," he tells her. He looks at her a moment, considers telling her that he enjoys watching her sleep. He discards the thought quickly. If she blushes any fiercer than she is now, she'll pass out.

She turns her back to him without saying anything else.

He blinks at the abruptness of it, then realizes what she was expecting. He can't help but wonder if she's turning because she thinks he wants her to, or because she doesn't want to see.

He weighs possibilities, reads the taut line of her body. She's tense, stiff, but not trembling, not giving any of her usual fear tells.

It's the absence of fear that decides him.

He wants to tell her that there's no shame in attraction, that whatever has happened leaves no sin on her shoulders. But he can't find the right words -- if there even are right words -- and it's not his to speak of. Not until she's comfortable enough to tell him.

He steps around her, shrugs into his undershirt, then the outer gi of his uniform.

He turns his head just barely enough to see her in the corner of his eye as he gathers their bags. Her eyes are wide, her lips parted, a faint blush creeping over her cheeks.

He shuts the shoji door, leans his back against the wall beside it, and waits.

She emerges quickly, in uniform and with her yukata folded in neat corners. A moment passes as she packs it away, and then they descend the stairs.

Now that she's closer to him, is awake and moving, she seems more relaxed.

"You must have been up early, Aoshi-sama. Did you not sleep well?"

"Well enough," he says.

She looks up at him for a moment. Her eyes are sorrowful, but the gentle curve to her lips makes the expression tender rather than pitying. "The usual nightmares, huh?"

"Aa," he says. No need to inform her that she's the newest addition.

She seems sad a moment. Almost wistful. But then a mischievous smile lights her face. "Well, it's morning now. I'm sure the sunlight will chase all that away."

He almost says 'for a while,' but thinks better of it. Instead, he pauses on the stairs, cycling through variant phrasings. At least he settles on, "Misao, are you taking ill?"

She stares at him. "Uhm, no, Aoshi-sama?"

"Ah. I'd assumed, when you kept closing the shutter..." He let the sentence trail off.

She flushes, waves two hands in front of her face. "No, no, it's nothing like that! I just never sleep with the shutter open. I don't even do it at home."

The knot of unease returns, distinct like the gap where a roof ends and the twenty-foot leap begins. Or at least distinct as the difference between tile and nothingness, after that first fatal misstep off the roof has been taken.

That knot only grows when they enter the main courtyard. They stop on the engawa to pull on their shoes, and all the while Misao's eyes flick first from the doctor speaking with the okami to a young man speaking with a middle-aged woman. He notes a mild physical resemblance in their faces and a stronger one in the way both men stand.

A doctor and his son? He recalls the size of the scar on her leg, the length, and the knot tightens, burns cold dread in the pit of his stomach. He thinks of the same hands that wounded her stitching her back together and he's not cold anymore. Fury boils a fever through his veins.

The doctor must catch sight of her. He breaks away from his conversation with the okami and moves toward them. His mouth curls into something like a smile, but the smile is edged. It's not a greeting; it's a threat.

"Misao-chan," he says.

She stiffens at the sound of his voice. Aoshi's gaze flicks down briefly, and he suppresses a frown when he realizes that she's looking past the doctor at his son.

The doctor laughs. The jovial sound seems calculated to show good humor while allowing him to take up more space. "I must say I didn't expect to see you back in this town, Misao-chan."

More pieces click together: an intimidation tactic. The unfrinedly smile, the laugh, the use of the diminutive -- it's all an act performed to frighten Misao.

Whether Misao has been assaulted or not, whether it was the doctor or his son, the doctor knows. Knows, and is using it to --

Combat reflexes make him tense nearly invisibly, ready to attack without telegraphing intent. Anger spurs him to make the tension visible, to bristle as he places himself between Misao and the doctor.

"Just passing through, Tanaka-sensei," she tells him without looking up.

The very idea of Misao becoming meek is like being plunged into icy water: so cold that he burns inside, and outside, and every breath shudders. But the actual sight of Misao unable to meet someone's eyes unbalances him, unhinges him, makes his fists ache with desires he doesn't want to name.

* * *

Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,  
Oh, hard times, come again no more.  
\--Stephen C. Foster, "Hard Times, Come Again No More"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING:** While they won't appear until chapter three, this fic _will_ feature the specifics of the sexual assault that makes up the backdrop of "Hard Times."


	2. never looked so down

i.

Aoshi uses the time he spends awake to examine further memories, but he's not sure what he seeks in them. The less recent past can tell him nothing more about absolution, and he knows enough of it, now, that he can stop his search for it. He shies away from the puzzle he'd been thinking about before, the puzzle he hopes he hasn't solved -- now, with her here beside him and his own offer made, thinking about it feels like an invasion of privacy.

When she wants him to know, she'll tell him.

He corrects his thoughts: if she wants him to know. Though it's all but certain -- or is it? She's never mentioned it, never alluded to it at all. Perhaps she simply hasn't seen a reason to, perhaps she's never seen an appropriate moment.

Or perhaps she doesn't want him to know.

But if she doesn't... he can't simply forget it. He can let it rest, can let it wait, can even let it go, if she needs him to -- but he can't take back the knowing. Would that satisfy her?

He never comes to a conclusion: she begins to stir in her sleep again. At first, her movements look like mere restless tossing and turning, but he knows her better than that. She only sleeps that restlessly in the height of summer, but it's a coool day and she's curled herself into the shadiest space in their car.

She begins to murmur after that. She's sleep-slurred and quiet enough that he barely hears her over the rattling of the train. He only makes out a few words, but they're enough to chill him regardless of his unwillingness to analyze: no, stop, but I'm not.

At last, she says in scarcely a whisper, scarcely a breath: please.

He's heard that tone too many times before not to recognize it. He's heard it from the women bought by men of Edo Castle, from the "amusements" the yakuza sometimes gave out to its lesser enforcers, from the boys kept by high-ranking army officers. And he's heard it from far, far too many Oniwaban agents.

He says her name in an attempt to wake her.

But the only response he hears is the sound of a sleeping body, turning over.

He has a hard time focusing on any one topic, after that. Thoughts of Shikijou and Hyottoko give rise to thoughts of Sagara and Saitou. Memories of training alongside Okon and Omasu somehow blur into long hours spent watching sunlight play over four gravestones.

Her first new whisper jolts him out of his thoughts. He stands, crosses the rocking train only a touch unsteadily, and seats himself beside her. He draws the curtain aside and watches her.

It's almost like half a bunraku play, though admittedly a sick one. Just as before, she begins to murmur denials. Not just "Stop," but "That's not true," and "But I'm not!" Her murmurs only grow quieter when she begins to tremble.

She kicks her right leg once, then goes still.

And then she begs again: "Please."

He reaches out to touch her shoulder, grasping as gently as he can. He nudges her lightly, unwilling to shake her. "Misao."

This time, she wakes. He watches her sit up, moving so quickly he almost wonders if she has springs instead of joints. She scoots back along the train's bed until she's pressed up against the wall.

"Aoshi-sama," she says. But for some reason, the blush that covers her face doesn't strike him as endearing. "Uhm, I, sorry, didn't mean to bother you --"

"Aa," he says, because leading questions crowd his thoughts and he refuses to do that to her.

She produces a tangle of sound, then, that he can only blink at. She flushes red, then looks away, and says, just a hair slower, "It wasn't my parents."

"The nightmare?"

"Yeah. It wasn't my parents, Aoshi-sama."

He nods once. He wants to offer to listen, but it's too close to asking. And to ask would steal any element of choice from her telling him.

After a moment of silence, he says, "I thought not."

She blinks up at him.

He should tell her that he has invaded the privacy not only of her sleep but of her past. He should tell her that he has spent too many early morning hours watching her sleep on this trip. He _should_ tell her -- but he can't bring himself to.

"You behaved differently when you were dreaming of your parents," he says.

She stares up at him. Her mouth rests in a mild pout, as if she's a bit confused by him, but her eyes are wide, troubled. "What do you mean? Did I do something... weird?"

"You spoke this time," he says.

There's no missing the panic that crosses her face. He wants to reach out, to touch her, to hold her as Hannya held her when she was a child.

Once again, he wants to turn back time.

* * *

ii.

He sees the city on the horizon half an hour before the train groans to a halt.

Aoshi murmurs a request into the ear of a nondescript youth standing in the train station. Misao turns to watch him, but he doesn't allow himself to look at her until the brief conversation ends. Kyoto ia a city of people who know people -- even more so than Tokyo -- and for now, the news of the Aoi-ya's "newest employee" leaving town with the owner's "granddaughter" while carrying a no-dachi, a few burlap sacks, and a shovel should stay quiet.

Their walk back to the Aoi-ya is mostly quiet. Every now and then, Misao calls out to a vendor, trading greetings and news. She turns her head to look at him just before or after each exchange, as if she wonders if he minds.

At last, a block away from the Aoi-ya, she finally asks: "What was I saying? When I was asleep on the train?"

"I didn't understand much," he tells her.

Panic and relief war on her face. She shakes her head as if to clear it and then smiles. "So who were you talking to in the station?"

"A supplier."

Her smile grows even wider, even happier. It's almost blinding.

Her pure, unfettered joy stills his breath in his chest for a moment. How could anyone hurt such a person? No. More than that... How could anyone want to harm Misao?

Okina awaits them at the Aoi-ya's front door. He pretends to be busy splashing water over the entrance to clean it, but the faint line of tension in his shoulders tells Aoshi that the older onmitsu is on alert.

"You're back, I see," he says, sweeping Misao into a hug.

Once he's set her back down and she's caught her breath, Okina looks over to Aoshi.

He inclines his head but says nothing. Misao will tell their story far better than he.

"I take it Himura did need help?"

"It was a pretty serious bind," Misao agrees. She looks to Aoshi, as if requesting permission to tell the story. He nods. "Come on, Jiya, I'll tell you all about it inside."

He hears their voices retreat, listens until the city sounds swallow Misao's words.

In the end, they spend the rest of the day in Kyoto, and sleep in the Aoi-ya that night. It feels strange to sleep with Misao somewhere else. He's spent weeeks sharing a room with her.

He misses the sound.

* * *

iii.

During their trip to the grave site, he's the only one to wake with nightmares. Sometimes he recalls them in every horrifying detail. More often, he doesn't. He wakes with only snatches of images or vague impressions of memories to explain why he's hyperventilating.

It takes them three days to cover the distance. That final night, Aoshi contemplates his mental map as he builds a fire. If he were given to nostalgia -- if it were possible to be nostalgic about this trip -- he'd find comfort in the familiarity of tallying distances while he places twigs. He rises from his crouch by the fire pit, satisfied more with his calculations than the small fire. They'll arrive at the grave by mid-morning if they leave at sun-up.

Misao only lays out one ground blanket. He looks down at it, then looks to her. He raises an eyebrow in a question he doesn't trust himself to voice.

She flushes prettily, stammers half an answer, stops, and finally says, "Aoshi-sama, it's getting too cold, and the fire won't last all night."

"Aa," he says. But her offer confounds him.

Is she... ready? To spend a night close to him, even without intimacy? He can't even ask. To ask would impugn her privacy.

"I don't need much sleep," he says.

"Aoshi-sama." Her voice is gentle, but he sees a hint of steel in her gaze. "Aoshi-sama. You haven't been getting much sleep lately."

So she's noticed. He shouldn't be surprised; given the opportunity, Misao can read him well. She always has.

In the end, he slips out of his boots, unties his obi so he can slide onto the blanket beside her. He keeps his back turned to her. She's small and warm against him; he can feel her even through his gi. He wants to roll over; he wants to hold her in his arms, as if his touch could keep her nightmares and memories at bay -– or maybe her touch would ward him from his own.

That night, he sleeps dreamlessly. Though he wakes at measured intervals, he never hears her cry out or senses her kicking.

They both wake in the gray hour just before dawn. He doesn't know which of them woke first. With his back turned, it's impossible to be sure.

She's silent for a while. He stays quiet, too, content to listen to her even breathing. The light shifts from gray to a weak, watery gold and the air warms, degree by degree.

At last, she shifts underneath the blanket. Her bare foot brushes against his calf; the sudden rush of heat through his veins, pooling low in stomach, makes him glad his back is to her. The blanket whispers as she moves yet more. Her knee brushes against him for an instant, there and gone again, and his body flushes in response.

He rolls onto his back, stretches his arms above his head to make his propped knee look more natural, then breathes out and relaxes. He turns his head to meet her eyes. She's rolled onto her stomach, with her arms crossed and her chin resting against her hands. She's looking at him out of the corners of her eyes.

“Aoshi-sama... Will you tell me?"

“Tell you?"

"What happened in Tokyo, I mean."

"I accepted a job from trash. In his grudge against me, he killed the others."

She's quiet for a while. At last, she lets out a little sigh. "That's not all, is it, Aoshi-sama?"

He makes no reply. Of course there's more to the story, and of course she knows it, but he'll lance this wound when it's time.

She sits up to look at him, then.

"There's more," he tells her.

She nods. Her expression is patient, as if she's waiting, but after a few moments, she closes her eyes. She relaxes, her breaths slow, but then her breath hitches and she sits straight up. She turns her head to look at him, opens her mouth to speak --

"The rest can wait."

He watches her cycle through expressions: surprise, curiosity, irritation, back to curiosity, and finally settling on determination. She nods at him, but her then her mouth curves as she says, "Will you tell me... when we get there?"

He sits up as well, reaches for the obi. He wraps and ties it off without looking, turning to face her only once he's fully dressed.

"I will."

* * *

iv.

The grave site hasn't changed much since he was here last -- strange to think it's been so long. He sees more leaves on the ground, taller grass. That's all that's changed.

Misao stops short as they reach the clearing. Her eyes are wide, a little wet. One hand flits to cover her mouth, and she turns to look at Aoshi.

She's not asking if they've arrived at the grave. He nods at her silent question.

She takes a step forward, toward the graves. She stops abruptly, her head jerking up as she speaks: "Aoshi-sama?"

"Yes?"

She turns to look at him. One foot pivots, causing the knee to pivot inward in a stance that's shy, almost unaccountably so. "Aoshi-sama.... who's where?"

He's silent a moment, then moves to follow her. He makes sure his steps are audible. Rather than side-step when he reaches her, he simply keeps moving forward. His arm brushes against hers.

She follows him, just as he knew she would.

He stops before the graves, then tilts his head to indicate that she should move a little closer. He turns his body to face the left-most stone. "Hannya," he tells her, then turns to face the next stone, "Shikijou." A pause as he turns, "Beshimi. Hyottoko on the far side."

Misao looks up at him then. Her lips curl into something he hesitates to call a smile. It's not joyous; it's not even happy -- but her lips have curved up, rather than down.

Aoshi looks back down at her, makes eye contact for a brief moment.

She kneels before the graves without saying anything. He watches her fingers touch the stone markers, brushing tenderly against them.

When she bows her head, he turns away. Steps far enough away to give her privacy, if she's quiet.

If she speaks to them, he doesn't hear it.

After several minutes, he sees her drifting amongst the trees. He steps out from behind a tall, thick pine and she moves straight toward him. She stops a little closer to him than she usually stands, looks up as she places a hand on his upper arm.

Her eyes are still wet, but not red-rimmed.

"Aoshi-sama," she says, taking her hand from his arm. "Do you... want a little time with them?"

"Aa," he says.

She offers him a small smile. "Then I'll wait for you here."

"Aa." He takes a few steps past her, then pauses. He looks back once, meets her eyes again.

She smiles for him, and vanishes into the trees.

Alone with them, he surveys the graves. Their stones bear no names. He saw no need to mark the stones when he buried them; he knew where each was. He had refused to memorialize them permanently with anything but a title and his own death.

He stays silent. There's little enough to say now: Misao will have told them -- or will tell them soon enough -- all that's happened.

"You'll have flowers soon," he says instead.

He's given them -- he's given himself -- the only answer he can. It doesn't quite feel like enough. Maybe it never will.

He stares at the stones, at the mounds of earth. At the green that's grown, and the leaves that have fallen. They're all healing from something, he thinks. The forest heals from the wound of his shovel. He heals from the loss of his men.

Yes, he thinks. It's time.

He looks back when he leaves the clearing to search for Misao.

In the end, he tells her the full story while he's digging. It spares him the torment of having to watch her reactions, of having to see her tears in addition to hearing them fall. He hears every hitch of her breath and that's hard enough. He nearly stops in his telling each time, but she always draws him back with a leading question.

He knows, intellectually, that speaking of the memories can ease the pain of holding them. It's never struck him as true. He can think of a thousand tortures more pleasant than this, than speaking of this.

Than speaking of it to Misao, whom he never wanted to learn this sort of pain.

But who more than he should tell her? And when should he tell her, if not now?

At the end, he collapses by the fourth grave, with Hyottoko's head wrapped away in more than one bag. Physically, he's not fatigued, but he's mentally and emotionally drained. The tiredness in his chest seems to weigh him down.

* * *

v.

The trip back to the Aoi-ya passes almost without incident. She sleeps at his side for most of the trip, only retreating to a more appropriate distance on their final night. They're in sight of the main road into Kyoto from this direction, which means they're half a day's walk from Kyoto, at best.

That's the night the worst nightmare he's seen yet strikes her. Later, when there's time to process beyond the simmer of fury and fragnented, kaleidoscopic impressions of the night around them, Aoshi will wonder what might have summoned it. Later, he'll examine every detail of that night -- and the peaceful nights before it -- and try to find a touchstone or a sign.

But the events resist interpretation.

Everything seems normal: he settles on their campsite and digs a shallow firepit. She hums as she heats rice -- pulled from a tiny bag he didn't realize she was carrying, but when he turns to look at her, she only smiles at him. He sees a gleam of mischief in her eyes and decides not to ask directly.

They eat. They lay out ground blankets. He'll look back on and wonder about the way Misao chews on her lip for a moment, her thicker blanket still rolled under one arm. She peers around the camp, shifting her weight uneasily, for another minute or so before she finally makes her bed a short pace from his.

Whether or not she's comfortable so far from him, she falls asleep quickly.

Aoshi stays awake just long enough to ascertain -- again -- that their campsite is safe. Everything he sees and hears lulls him into a sense of peace: the moon rises crystal clear in a dark sky, a sea storm still a few days from land scents the breezes with salt, the wind rattles too loud through dying grass for them to be anything but alone.

His dreams are a weak, shadowy blur. They don't make sense, even while he's dreaming them, and at first he thinks he woke out of irritation at his own sleeping mind.

Then he hears -- something. He's heard her toss and turn at night before, but this noise gives him pause. He listens closely, trying to determine just what's wrong with the sound.

It takes him a moment to recognize it. Her movements are strange. Nonsensical. She isn't tossing or turning, isn't kicking; instead she seems to be lying mostly quietly. Lying still. But every now and then, he hears her heartbeat speed up, and he hears the thud of a limb striking the ground.

Aoshi sits up. At first, between the sea fog hazing over the night sky and the dull embers of their fire, he can barely make out what she's doing, nevermind her face. But he doesn't need much light. His eyes adjust.

The sound that accompanies her increased heartrate is her arm, he realizes. For some reason, she's moved one arm above her head, and when her heartbeat speeds up, she lifts it, then lets it fall.

"Misao," he says, dropping into a crouch as far from her as he can while still able to reach. He presses his hand against her shoulder. But he can't bring himself to shake her, can't even tighten his grip. He nudges her, gently, and keeps nudging when she doesn't respond.

It takes a few repetitions of her name for her to finally hear him and wake. Her eyes snap open, perfect blue even when seen with so little light.

The innocence of her expression clashes with the blood that drips from her lower lip. He watches a drop fall, stares at the ragged shred she's torn her lip to, and recalls the wicked, mischievous smile of earlier that night. The contrast makes him feel ill.

A shudder rolls through her. She bows her head. Flyaway locks hide her mouth and most of an eye from him, but there's no mistaking the way her hands tremble when she brings them to her face. She shakes her head, after that, shakes her head while she digs the heels of her hands into her eyes.

There's no shaking away nightmares like this one. No shaking away memories like tonight's.

He doesn't tell her so. Instead, he releases her shoulder and settles in a little closer to her. Her body heat travels the gap between them, carried by the way she shivers, even now.

Gradually, her hands stop trembling. The shivers slow and then cease altogether.

"I'm better now," she says.

He only looks down at her, still faintly unnerved by her mouth.

She looks back up at him, and for an instant, she gives him a smile. But the smile vanishes as she looks away.

For a few moments, the only sound is of the wind through the grass. For reasons of her own, she doesn't say anything. And he doesn't trust himself to speak. The questions crowd his mouth; some leading, some direct.

"You're not asking what it was about," she says, at last. "You've never asked what they were about."

She seems to be waiting for some sort of reply. He almost can't find one, but he eventually settles on, "I haven't."

"It's so obvious by now," she says. "You have to... have to have guessed. But you've never said anything about it. You and Okon. You've never said anything at all!"

He looks down at her again. This time, when she looks back up at him, she seems more herself. Obviously tired and with a flaring temper, but still Misao.

"Why?"

The word comes out ragged, as if she's forced it out of her throat. She's not just asking why he's never said anything, but why she has to remember it. Why it happened at all.

He can only answer one of those 'whys.' "Forcing you to explain would only have hurt you."

Misao nods. Her expression is faintly distant, a little troubled; she's still processing what he meant. "Like when that old woman at the inn...?"

"Aa."

She's quiet a long moment. Aoshi uses that moment to listen for changes in the night around them, but the only thing new is the too-quick beat of her heart.

"Aoshi-sama, does talking about it really make things any easier?"

He has no immediate answer for that. It helps some. It's never helped all. He's listened to the stories of more than a few Oniwaban agents. Some walked away a little lighter. Others didn't. Okon in particular seemed to draw her strength from _not_ talking about it.

"It varies," he tells Misao, and hates that he's saying this, hates that he's said it to others. Hates that he's saying it to Misao, who should never have learned any of this.

"So sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't?" At his nod, she looks away a moment, chewing on her lip again. "Can you ever tell? Whether it will help or not?"

"Nothing certain." He pauses. "Misao. When you do, start slowly. Keep an exit."

She nods. "Give myself time to see if I need to stop?"

"Aa."

Despite how close he's crouching, the night seems to stretch out between them. Wind wispers through the grass. Somewhere a creek burbles. The sea breeze plays with Misao's blankets.

She looks up at him, still chewing on her lip. He wants to tell her to stop. She's already torn it enough for one night.

"I've never told anyone what happened. Not even Omasu or Okon, and they both --" She stops, shakes her head.

"They both?"

"I went home right after. He'd cut me so badly that I needed a week just to be able to leave. When I got home, I was still limping."

"Omasu and Okon noticed?"

Misao nods again. She swallows, looks away. "They knew. I mean, it's pretty obvious, I guess. They just didn't ask, and I never said it, and -- and I'm so tired of hiding from it. I've been trying so hard to act like it never happened, but."

He doesn't say anything. Even now, he can't ask. Can't instruct her to tell him. It all has to go at her pace. So rather than reply, he reaches for her. He keeps his movements slow, visible, watching for a flinch, for any sign of fear, of further distress.

But she lets him touch her. She puts a small hand over his own and rests that way.

"Aoshi-sama, can you hear it? I don't want --" She stops, looking up at him a little confusedly, then looks down. "It's not that I don't think you -- I --"

"I can hear it."

She closes her eyes. "I was fourteen."

The words fall from her mouth, hang tonelessly in the air. The hearing is like knives, regarldess. From the innkeep's comments, he had guessed that much. Despite his suppositions, how long he's been making them, the confirmation burns as much as conjecture did.

"And pretty stupid, I guess. Maybe if i'd been more on guard, or left sooner..." She stops, laughing at herself. It's not a happy laugh. "I know Omasu and Okon would say it wasn't my fault, but if I hadn't been there at all--!"

How many times has he heard that regret? _If I just hadn't been there._ He says nothing. What is there to say, but what she already knows?

"I met him in the minshuku. He had dinner with the rest of us guests." She pauses for another long moment. "The doctor's son. Tanaka Tadashi."

He'd already wanted to kill that doctor. Now, though, he takes the doctor's attempt at subtle threats, combines it with the news that it was his son, and he wants them both dead so badly that his hands ache.

He relaxes his other hand from the fist it had curled into, ignores the sting of half-moon cuts in the meat of his hand and the red that follows after. He shifts his gaze from the blood that's dried on the edge of her mouth, the ragged tangle she's chewed her lip to.

She looks up at him, uncertain.

Between the pressing need to murder two men and his own prohibition on asking, once more, he can say nothing. Instead, he tugs his hand away, gently, then moves to rest it against her shoulder.

She leans into his touch, waits a moment, and then begins to speak again.

Aoshi listens, forcing himself to say nothing. But every word that leaves her bloodied lips only leaves him aching more and more for murder.

* * *

I watched you walkin' home from school  
Your friends on the old playgrounds  
You never looked so down  
\--The Wallflowers, "Josephine"


	3. but where at last the sea's line is the sky's

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Explicit, graphic depiction of the rape of a fourteen year old minor, accompanied by period-appropriate misogyny.

His name is Tanaka Tadashi.

He's heavy-set, not outright fat, exactly. He looks more like he builds muscle every now and then, but then lets himself go. Taller than she is, too, but lots of people are taller than she is.

She notices both details, not that they matter. What matters is the way he follows her around the room without ever leaving his seat. What matters is the questions: what's your name? Where are you going? How old are you? Surely your family sent someone to welcome you? Why are you travelling alone?

So what matters is that for tonight, for here, she's visiting her very busy, very protective elder brother in Tokyo. She smiles away any questions that dig deeper; no-one needs to know that the man she seeks is an onmitsu, is probably keeping his ears to the ground.

The fourth time he asks how old she is, Misao huffs a little and snaps, "You keep asking that. I'm starting to feel about ninety-three!"

That pulls startled, indulgent laughter from the okami.

But rather than laugh a little and then back off, as etiquette would require, Tanaka's eyes narrow. He watches her a moment, suddenly and silently angry, and then turns his gaze on one of the other travellers, a heavily pregant woman who shrinks into her husband's shadow at Tanaka's regard.

Misao sighs in relief, thinking he's lost interest.

But once she starts talking to the okami about the state of the road into Tokyo, he cuts in. It's not even a smooth cut.

"There's a garden on this side of town," he says, and his face is the kind of mask people wear when they try to hide their anger — badly.

She pretends she doesn't hear him. The okami looks nervously to him a few times, but Misao staunchly refuses to respond to that kind of stupidity.

"Would you like to see it?"

She looks over at him, having nearly forgotten he even said anything.

He seems to realize she'd been ignoring him, so he prompts her: "The garden?"

"No." She can't keep the _Now will you leave me alone?_ out of her voice. She almost feels sorry for him, when he recoils, clearly startled at being rejected so plainly.

 

* * *

"I thought, for a while, that he might have been different, later, if I hadn't been rude."

Aoshi doesn't voice his doubt of that fact. He's seen very little that could sway such men from their chosen courses.

"I found out later, from the midwife, that he really is different if you're nice to him at first." She laughs mirthlessly. "She says he's worse. I couldn't imagine how, but she says the women who... agreed with him usually just ended up dying."

 

* * *

For a civilian, he's good at knots. She has to fight down panic, salty in the back of her throat, when she realizes that she can't seem to unknot her obi from around her wrists. Not from this angle.

What kind of ninja is she, that she's stuck here?

Tanaka's hands begin to tug on her shorts. All thoughts of how to stay alive fly right out of her head. Somewhere inside her, beneath the fire in her skull, she's recoiling. She's only barely aware that he's still talking.

That's when she begins to argue with him: _That's not true. But I'm not. I don't know what you're talking about. Let me go._

His fingers press against one of her thighs to make her move that leg. She can feel his skin against hers. Her entire body jerks: she kicks out, trying to push him back, even while she tries to lift herself off the ground without using her hands. But he forces her legs open anyway, knees apart, and the crack of her shoulder dislocating itself echoes through the garden.

She only has a moment to register cold metal against her leg before the knife plunges down. It's quick, at least. There's no transition; one moment, the knife presses against her skin. The next, she can feel the steel in the meat of her thigh.

"You think you can fight back?" He spits in her face, then grips the handle of her knife.

He drags it down. Slowly.

She can't stop the scream.

The world above her goes blurry from trying not to cry. Her eyes sting, but that's nothing compared to the fire of her leg. The cut hurts so badly that she feels dizzy and wants to throw up again.

He tosses the knife away like it's trash, then loosens the wrappings on her other leg. He uses another of her knives to stake it down and that makes her want to cry just as much as everything else tonight has.

"I knew you'd cooperate eventually," he says. "You all do."

 _This isn't cooperating_ , she wants to tell him. _This is surviving._

 

* * *

"He stopped moving for a while, once he had my bindings off. He was judging me. Only he wouldn't shut up," Misao says. Her voice has gone hoarse.

The wetness in her eyes leaves him reeling. He almost cannot think past the need to fix this somehow, but he knows too well that there is no fixing it. He would turn back time if he only could.

Aoshi doesn't ask what Tanaka said. If she wants him to know, if she even remembers any details, she'll tell him.

 

* * *

The fog wanders through the garden, slinking low and silvery in the minutes or hours that crawl by. She looks up at it, dimly aware that she's so close she could reach after it; it leaves droplets of moisture on her skin, makes her feel clammy.

Or is that his sweat? She's not sure.

The rocking tide in her head recedes just enough for her to think. The ache between her legs dims to a dull throb. She can ignore it if she focuses on something else, like the burning pulse of blood from her thigh.

She has to concentrate in order to roll onto her side. And once she's moved that much, she has to lie still and think very hard about her breathing. She can't breathe too fast, or she'll strangle herself. She can't breathe too slow, or she'll pass out. She has to breathe at just the right tempo to keep the pain manageable.

She presses her palms to the ground and pushes herself to her feet. It's agonizingly slow. The muscles in her legs scream in protest, while the burn of the shoulder she dislocated makes her dizzy. She almost loses her balance as she tries to stand. Even when she's up, she nearly falls right back down.

She has to move forward now, while she still can. If she stays still too long she'll pass out. If she falls, she knows she'll never be able to make herself get back up.

The gate doesn't make a sound as she pushes her good shoulder against it. It doesn't even click when she closes it.

She looks back exactly once. Her blood leaves bright spots, turned from red to gray by the darkness.

 

* * *

His hand presses between her thighs. She twitches, trying to dodge his touch but too weighted to move, and with nowhere to move _to_. He slides her open, forces one of his fingers into her.

Her breath hisses through her teeth. Misao bites down hard on her lip to keep from crying out again. She can't let him have anything else. Can't.

He slides a second finger inside her. Her entire body tenses in response. Too much else hurts for the pain of it to stand out, but his presence inside her feels like a balancing act.

The cloud cover lifts, moonlight breaking through the fog for just a few moments. He watches her, dark-eyed and intense, still talking about how much she must have longed for this. She watches the garden above them and thinks: _I bet he's never wanted anything in his life_.

He moves his hand inside her. He leaves his thumb outside, though, presses it up against what must be a bundle of nerves. It's a soft touch that hits her so hard a shudder rolls down her spine. The shiver feels the way trees must when a strong wind blows them back and forth.

Misao tries to jerk away again. She goes nowhere. She can't get the leverage to move her hips or even her shoulders. The effort leaves her stinging and dizzy. She feels blood drip down her thigh, tastes something salt-copper in her mouth.

His hand is almost gentle compared to the knife or the way he kept hitting her. His thumb never stops circling. But every time she thinks she's figured it out, gotten numb to it, he finds some new way to move his fingers.

Something hot starts twining itself through every muscle. It's worse low in the pit of her stomach. Tight, but sinuous. And then the warmth crawls up through her belly and toward her throat.

He moves one hand to press her down, closer to the ground. Her shoulder pops again as the joint dislocates even further. She only hears it distantly. Almost doesn't feel it.

Her stomach flops around. The heat builds. Her throat stings.

This isn't his, wasn't ever meant for him to see. She can't give this to him.

Inside, she tenses around his fingers and the heat breaks in a fever, in a fire that burns all through her. It's awful, it feels good underneath her skin and in her bones and that makes her sick to her stomach. Like her blood is boiling except it doesn't hurt. If it wasn't so wrong, if she didn't hate it and him so much, if he was someone else, she'd almost —

But she does hate him and she does hate it and she turns her head to gag again. Her empty stomach squeezes but she barely notices it over the throb of her thigh, the slow fiery drip of her blood down her skin.

His fingers leave her when the spasms end. She's a little glad of that, at least.

Then she hears cloth rustle, watches his belt fall to the ground. She has seconds to think and say _no no no_ but he ignores it. Ignores her. That she doesn't want it doesn't matter.

"You were so slick," he says, gasping for breath. "You're greedy for it."

"That's not true!"

It's like being stabbed all over again.

Something hot and wet slides down her cheek. She tastes salt. Maybe it's sweat; she hopes it's sweat.

But he swipes his thumb along her skin, under her eye. His mouth twists. He jerks his hand, scratching a line down her face where the wetness was.

"You were so eager for it before. What makes you think you can cry now?"

"I'm not crying," she says, and believes it until he scratches her again.

 

* * *

Fog keeps wreathing the streets below. The world is half-hidden from her sight. The sound of her breathing carries in the mist, echoes strange and hollow.

Everyone is asleep. Nobody heard her scream. This town might as well be empty.

Misao looks down from atop a roof and can't quite remember how she got there. The throbbing in her head makes it hard to focus. And her shoulder hurts, too, with the kind of pain that just doesn't shut up no matter how she adjusts the bad arm with her good one.

She looks at the open window to her room and both her arm and leg flare sharp. Her mouth tastes tangy and sour and for a moment she's dizzy. It would be easier to beg the okami to open the minshuku's doors, but if nobody heard her before —

And she doesn't think she wants anyone to hear. Not anymore.

The world goes gray when she climbs off the roof. She grabs the ledge of her window with one arm. The fingers of her good hand are the ones to grasp it, but her body slams into the side of the building, jarring her shoulder. Her head thumps against the wall and the world rings like a temple bell, dim and hazy.

She makes it three steps into the room from the window.

And then she collapses to her futon. She curls up, winds a blanket between her legs. She feels blood begin to wet the sheet, feels it and everything else ebb out.

She shivers as she watches the shadows lengthen, suddenly freezing cold on a balmy night. But she doesn't have the strength to find another blanket, or even to lift one if she could look.

The world is still silent, with only her uneven breath to make any noise. The quiet buzzes around in her head and she feels dizzy again.

 

* * *

The doctor looks down at her. His lips curl into a sort of well-meaning condescension; his face looks familiar, painfully familiar, and she doesn't even have the strength to tell him to leave. She's too tired from all the bleeding — and afraid, too, so afraid that her throat clams up.

"Misao, yes?"

Her 'yes' comes out as a soft whisper.

"An unfortunate name, considering," he says, and she feels her hands clench into fists. Before she can try to ask him what the hell that's supposed to mean, he adds, "I'm sure that what you've been through is difficult, but the leg should make a full recovery. Have you spoken to Atsumi-san about... your future?"

Her future? She can only stare numbly at him. Part of her is dully surprised to hear she even has one, that Tanaka's father isn't going to just kill her here, when she can't move, can't fight back.

"I'm sure if she knows anything definite, she'll be sure to tell you. Now, as for your recovery. You'll need to rest maybe four more days, and then I'm sure you'll be ready to be on your way. Really, another week after that could only help, but I doubt you'll want to stay here much longer."

She nods agreement. She doesn't want to be in this awful town a minute longer than she has to. She thinks about burning it down when she leaves, but that'd only kill a lot of people who haven't done anything to her.

"I really do suggest you leave as soon as possible, then." He smiles at her. Her stomach tries to crawl up her throat. "And I wouldn't bother trying to go to the police. Woman like you, they'll only think you're lying — about whether or not you wanted it, if nothing else. And I wouldn't suggest trying to argue you didn't egg him on."

She tastes bile and the thin soup the midwife helped her sit up to drink. Her stomach and throat have started to rebel against the soreness that soaked into the rest of her.

She hadn't planned on going to the police. Now, more than ever, she plans on killing him the minute she can walk and hold a knife at the same time.

Tanaka-sensei must see that in her face. He goes stiff, looks down at her with something between alarm and disdain, before he adds, "And if anything should happen to my son while you're here, I'll tell the police you killed him in an argument."

Misao opens her mouth to reply. She has no idea what she can even say to that, except maybe _Please I just want to leave_ or _Get out_ , but she never gets a chance to say either of those, regardless.

Tanaka-sensei's voice turns soft as he tells her, "You know they'll believe the town doctor over some insolent whelp who can't even keep her legs covered, much less closed."

There's no keeping her last meal in her stomach now. It's in her mouth, all of it, and she gags, nearly choking herself as she starts to throw up before she can lift herself off her back.

"Have a good afternoon, and I do hope that salve helps the swelling." He smiles again, steps carefully around her as he leaves.

 

* * *

"I thought about killing them both. Killing the doctor first, so he couldn't — " She cuts herself off. "I thought really hard about it for days, you know? But I couldn't. I wanted them dead so badly, and I couldn't kill them."

Calculated murder is not in her nature. Perhaps murder by impulse, killing in the heat of defending herself or someone else, but no, Aoshi cannot picture her planning a man's death.

Not the way he is.

Misao seems to sense that he's tensing again. She stops, looking at him. He relaxes from his crouch and settles in to sit beside her. Once he's settled in, he forces the rest of himself to relax as well.

That's when she touches him. It's a feather-light brush of her fingers against his forearm. The touch whispers up, until at last her hand rests on his bicep.

He places his hand over hers, just as she did with him earlier.

"Are you... angry with me?"

"No," he says. He's careful not to say it too quickly, too firmly. He could not withstand the sight of her wincing away from his voice. Not tonight.

Not ever.

Once again that sensation of wanting her never to fear anything again returns.

 

* * *

For an instant, she thinks she's passed through a _torii_ gate and didn't notice. Fog drifts through the garden, hiding a flower here, a shrub there, only to lift at random moments when the wind pushes it.

She paces a right angle along the wall, crouching, watching. Just watching the fog roll by is mesmerising.

Misao closes her eyes when the wind carries the scent of lilies up to her. They smell so clean —

She climbs down from the wall and moves through the garden. The high walls and closed gate make it seem like someone hid it away just for her.

Gravel crunches.

Misao goes stiff, steps into shadow and fog, but it's too late.

"Come to apologize?"

She goes even stiffer at that voice. "Not really," she says.

"But you did come looking for me," he says. "You're all the same."

"I wasn't looking for anybody," she tells him.

He talks right over her. "Even the ones who say no at first always come to see me. They're all filthy like that."

That leaves her confused. What is he talking about? Is he even talking to her, anyway?

Misao takes a step away from him. She looks around, a little frantic for an exit, but the fog's rolled back in. The only way out she can see clearly is the shut gate.

The shut gate on the other side of him.

And he's still ranting. "...for any man who asks. For any man who shows interest. Disgusting, wanton creatures..."

She tries to ignore him. Trapped in a small garden with a talkative crazy person; not anybody's idea of fun. She's got to get out of here before she goes crazy too.

But the fog has wreathed the walls, hidden away the handholds. She could jump, but if she can't see and if the fog messes with the way sound carries, she could hurt herself pretty badly.

"That's, uh, kind of you to say," she tells him because she hasn't been hearing a word he said, "but I need to go now. Um, really. Now. Early start tomorrow."

That stops him short. He stares at her for a few seconds, like she's the crazy one. She'd like to remind him that he's the one who spent a minute and a half ranting to absolutely nobody, but his eyes glint with something she's never seen before.

Rather than give him a piece of her mind, she shuts her mouth and takes another step away.

"You weren't listening," he says. He stresses the word _listening_ and she almost squeaks.

She tries to hide it behind anger. "Of course I wasn't! You were foaming off at the mouth like a crazy person."

"Can't even pay attention to the things that concern you. Were you thinking about it? Longing for it? Is that it?"

That only leaves her more confused and more ready to leave. She takes a step to the side, edging away from him. Can she get past him to get to the gate? After all, he's clearly crazy. No telling what he'd do if she had to get within reach of him.

He steps toward her. "You really are all the same. We give you every chance, but you're never any different."

"Hey, quit lumping me in with people I don't know!"

She takes another step sideways. If she can just put enough distance between the two of them, she can make it to the gate. She'll just have to move low and fast, and hope he can't intercept.

The fog behind him lifts; she looks up, checking light and distance, trying to guess how long it will take. But moonlight and starlight bounce off the fog, wrap her garden and him in haloes that make everything meaningless.

"Please," she says.

His lip curls.

The next is a blur. He moves quickly for a man so heavy-set. She sees his hand, fingers splayed and arm outstretched.

Then she sees it a lot closer, when his palm covers one of her eyes.

She brings her hands up to lock around his wrist, but he's thrown weight behind his push. She realizes that there's no time to slip his grip. The ground and the fog and the sky stream past; she has to stumble backwards to keep from falling.

Then the wall hits. The fog flares white for an instant; the stars she can see in the sky flare into pinpricks of light that dizzy her.

He pulls his hand back.

She's still dizzy, trying to find the breath and balance to move aside, when he grabs her face in one hand and knocks her head against the wall again.

The world flares; her head throbs so hard her ears ring. The pain makes her sick to her stomach.

She can't see to breathe, can't breathe to think. Her world narrows to the hand on her face and the throb of her head —

He shoves again, just as hard as the first two times, and the back of her head hits the wall.

She gags.

He laughs at her. His humor stops when she bends a little forward and throws up on his feet.

That makes him backhand her. She feels a knuckle strike her cheek; she turns with the slap, trying to roll with the strike so she can gain momentum for one of her own. But she stumbles to the side, ends up on one knee.

She looks up. It's the most she can do; her head hurts too much to let her stand.

He presses his palms to her shoulders. Pushes, and she falls back.

"Stop," she says, but the word is thick in her mouth, burbles with the gall from her stomach she's still got in her cheek.

He ignores her. First he takes her gloves. He sees the practice scars — Okon says there's no way to handle blades without a few cuts to the hand, until you learn better. She knows he sees them because he traces one finger along a few.

She tries to push his hand away, but he just starts to rant again. Then he takes her knives. Even once he has them, he doesn't shut up.

He talks too fast for her to keep up with all of it and the way everything spins, too. But she catches a few words: filthy tease, he says while he unknots her obi.

"You wanted this," he tells her once he has the obi in one fist.

He hits her in the face with the other fist. It's not even a punch. He just grabs her forehead and slams her already throbbing head into the ground again.

"You asked me for this with how you dress," he says, pushing her wrists together, above her head, and knots the obi there. "With the way you talk."

That's when her eyes start to burn. She doesn't want to cry, doesn't want to give him that much. But she knows what he wants. And she's beginning to think she's not going to get out of it.

He uses one of her knives to cut away the bandages around her chest. He cuts them off strap by strap. He's taking his time, taking the time to tug on each bandage he cuts, unravelling the bindings.

He digs his fingers into the fabric and pulls. She looks up at him, catches the hint of satisfaction as he does so. He tosses the fabric away like it doesn't matter, now that he's torn it to shreds.

Distantly, above the hum and whine of the throb in her head, she wonders what he'll do when he's torn _her_ to shreds. Once he has everything he wants, she won't matter. How will he get rid of the body?

* * *

But where at last the sea's line is the sky's  
And truth and hope one sunlight in your eyes  
—Algernon C. Swinburne, "In The Bay"


	4. disconnected my heart

i.

It takes Aoshi a few moments to put the fragments of the story she has told him — very little of it chronological, all of it sequenced in a way that makes little sense to him but is perfectly _Misao_ — into some semblance of order. He does not take his hands from her shoulder while he does so; to retreat, he suspects, would be a mistake.

He almost wishes he had been willing to ask questions during her telling. But that would have served only to hurt her or slow her thinking. Better that he have to piece it all together now.

She says nothing while he thinks. She even keeps her breaths quiet; the Oniwaban train for silence first. Eventually, she begins to tremble. At first he thinks it might be a reaction to what she's had to relive, but she locks her jaw and looks down.

"Misao," he says, quietly, as gently as as he can without sounding false. Her head jerks up in response. Once again he thinks of a dog having its leash tugged. He banishes the image; he can't afford that thought just now. "You were not at fault for this."

At that, she relaxes into him. Not by much, but enough for him to know she's more at ease. The way she relaxes unsettles him. She had to have known it wasn't her fault. Had she been unable to believe it until someone else agreed? Did she need to hear him admit it? Or had she somehow not known? He hates that third possibility and isn't sure what he thinks of the other two.

He lets her lean against him, and says nothing further. He's tempted to smooth a hand along her braid, tempted to touch her, but he's still not sure she won't find it intrusive or frightening. He doesn't know how to ask.

That realization spurs another, and another. Stray thoughts and fragments of knowledge weave themselves together. It all crystallizes into the beginning of a plan. A set of actions, to be carried out on as swift a schedule as he can manage.

Tanaka Tadashi cannot be allowed to live. His father needs to die first, in order to prevent police involvement. Tokyo has plenty of places to dispose of bodies. Someone in the town will have access to a wagon; it would be a simple matter to acquire it for his own use.

What wages Takeda Kanryuu paid him are still in an Oniwaban look-out just outside Tokyo. The money would help fund a reformation of the Oniwabanshuu. A serviceable pretext for the return, should Okina ask. Should Misao ask, he'll simply tell her as much of the truth as she'll want to hear.

He needs to return to that village.

Stray dogs. Such a place must have plenty of stray dogs; he might not even need to bother with a wagon.

"Aoshi-sama?"

His gaze sharpens on Misao.

"You're planning something," she says.

Rather than deny it, he replies, "Aa."

She's quiet a moment. He lets the silence stretch between them. The sea breezes ruffle her mussed hair again. A few dark strands have flown away from her braid, tickle her lower lip. Her mouth has suffered enough abuse for the night; he has to resist the temptation to push them away.

And then she looks up at him. She unclasps her braid, then gathers the fly away strands and begins to re-braid her hair in efficient little tugs.

"I want to help."

Aoshi can only watch her closely. If she can read him well enough to know that he's planning, can she guess what he plans? Could she object to the notion of killing Tanaka?

"Misao. I intend to kill him," he says. Best to make sure she knows what he intends. If she cannot bear to see Tanaka die, then she will not have to watch.

Misao looks back up at him. She's calmer now, since telling her story. She's still upset, a little shaky from living it again, but she's not as tense.

"I know," she says, and Aoshi has found another ten thousand reasons to hate Tanaka Tadashi.

* * *

 

ii.

The night slides by. He watches it go. They enter Kyoto the next morning.

Days pass.

He buries his men again, this time properly, in another almost-abandoned outpost. Shiro and Kuro place headstones and Okina traces their names with charcoal. Moments later, Omasu follows Okina's painstaking, angular characters with a pick and a chisel.

Misao and Okon leave flowers and incense.

Omasu and Kuro tell stories. Not long ones — they cannot afford to linger — but quick, poignant remembrances of the men they've lost. How Hannya had always been a point of calm wherever he was, and Hyottoko had an infectious laugh. Shikijou had an entirely new perspective on knots; Beshimi absentmindedly picked up sharp things wherever he went, never really noticing who owned them.

Aoshi watches it all, and says nothing. He burns every instant into his memory, so he can revisit it later. But he's buried them once; burying them again is not really for his sake.

He's not burying them to sublimate his own grief or guilt.

When it's done, before they go, he runs his thumb along the faces of the stones. They have flowers now. It's time to let them rest.

* * *

 

iii.

That night he sleeps alone in his room. He feels better, more at peace with the deaths that weighed so heavily on him. They will always be a weight; his men will always be something missing. But he can move, he can breathe, he can live with pieces missing.

He has nightmares regardless.

Misao was a regular fixture in them even before she shared her story. Hearing the details only increases the level of detail in the dreams. He sees a garden, a man of particular build, her own knife flashing bright against her skin.

He wakes seeing her blood, dimmed by fogged-over light, and hearing her scream as Tanaka jerks her arm out of joint. He gasps for breath, then forces a few meditative techniques to calm himself.

When he can breathe freely, he rolls out of bed and crosses to his desk. There, he pens a few letters. Nothing incriminating. Just calling in favors owed to him or Takeda, offering a few non-monetary bribes where favors won't suffice.

He addresses each letter, then sets them all in a stack.

* * *

 

iv.

The next morning, he hands each thin strand of paper to Kuro to post. Kuro accepts the stack with both hands. He smiles, but says nothing.

He turns to see Misao standing on the stairs. She's wearing her civilian clothes. Her gaze flicks from the letters in Kuro's hand to his face.

He can see in her eyes, in the way she parts her lips, that she knows. Or she's guessed. He draws in a breath, then nods to Kuro and heads outside. If she asks, he'll tell her. But best if she doesn't ask here.

Misao follows. She shadows him as he crosses the street, steps into an alley to face him. A passing jinrikisha provides cover for their conversation, its wheels and runner loud in the street.

"Were those about…?"

"Aa. Preparation."

She tilts her head, studying him, or perhaps trying to figure out what he means. It reminds him again that she has never killed a man.

So he explains. "It will prevent unwanted attention."

Misao nods.

* * *

 

v.

That night he packs his bag again. He leaves Okina a coded message — four words on thin rice paper, left in the Aoi-ya's business office — and knocks once on Misao's door.

"Yes?"

"Misao."

He watches her gaze drift to the bag in his hand, the kodachi over his shoulder. She smiles, then scurries back into her room. She closes the door; he hears the soft rustle of fabric as she packs.

She emerges carrying a thick cloak and a bag of her own. Misao smiles at him in the moonlight and he spares a moment to hate himself as well as Tanaka.

Whose fault is it that she wants to help him kill? Tanaka's, who hurt her badly enough that it seems an appropriate response?

Or his, since he's the one providing the opportunity?

Once they've left the Aoi-ya, she doesn't leave him much time for guilt. Instead, Misao's smile widens.

"So where are we headed first?"

"Yokohama."

At his reply, she pulls the hood of the cloak down over her face. It's blue and white, hides her figure while the edge pattern draws the eye to the angle of her cheekbones and delicate jaw. Eye-catching. Fortunately, stealth is not high on his list of concerns.

Only once they've reached the harbor behind does Aoshi say, "All replies will go to a Tokyo outpost."

"Then why not go by — oh, you're giving the post time to deliver the letters?"

"No." He does not explain himself. She'll see soon enough.

* * *

 

vi.

There's a boat ride, quick and essentially painless. In daylight hours, they stray to the upper decks. Misao watches the water glide smoothly past, waves and wake a riot of black and blue and green, sunlight sparkling white amid the wave caps. Aoshi watches Misao and the other travelers — many of whom are foreign, finally allowed outside of the Kannai in Yokohama — and retreads his plans.

At night, Misao sleeps peacefully. When he wakes, he sees no sign that she has returned to the fitful sleep of the summer and fall.

His nightmares have not vanished. He knows they never will. But they're easier to forget in the morning sun, chased away by his own sense of purpose and Misao's easy smile.

* * *

 

vii.

The train from Yokohama does not arrive in Tokyo until after the sun has set. They wend their way from the docks to Rakuninmura, and from there to the outpost. Aoshi shifts his grip on the no-dachi sheath, readying himself for trouble. Misao picks up on the unspoken cue and stays near him, her arms loosely crossed and her hands on her wrists.

But even the most desperate of human vermin must see that they will not be easy victims -- will not be victims at all. They leave the city and make their way to the overlook, the outpost, without encountering anyone.

Misao pokes around the shack. For all he can tell, she's quietly noting the differences between what had been a combat-ready outpost and the inactive ones she's likely encountered. She could just be curious about her surroundings. He remembers Hannya and Beshimi having to coax or haul her out of crawlspaces and bolt-holes when she was younger. Her habit of exploring new places, reachable only to children and short people, and deciding to stay there at inopportune times had amused Hannya and exasperated Beshimi.

He heads outside, to the pigeon coops. A low-level member of the local yakuza tends the pigeons for a stipend; he hasn't been slacking, but Aoshi makes a mental note to relocate and retrain the birds and burn the outpost to the ground when they've finished.

He hears the door open and Misao steps through. Her movements are quick and darting. She steps neatly over a tripwire and tilts her head at him. Her bangs flutter beneath her cloak's hood.

"When this is all over, will we be going back the way we came, or just walk?"

Aoshi raises an eyebrow. "You want to stop in Tokyo?"

"And see Kaoru-san? Sure, why not?" Her mouth curves before she adds, a little uncertainly, "If it's not too much trouble."

Himura will _know_ , he doesn't say. Himura will see it somehow — in the way he carries his no-dachi, in Misao's eyes or his, in the way they walk. Will see and know that he's killed again, and feels no guilt. And Aoshi will have to endure the weight of an uncomfortable friendship and Himura's judging gaze.

On the other hand, where better to lie low after a murder than the dilapidated dojo of a woman known locally for honorable dealing and whose school is known for non-lethality?

"If you wish," he says.

* * *

 

viii.

Aoshi doesn't read the waiting messages until Misao has curled into a corner to sleep. Wary of waking her, he lights a single candle to do so. He's never needed much light, not even to read.

He burns two of the letters. The last, he crumples in his fist before burning. He replies to none.

While she sleeps, he leaves the overlook and heads into Tokyo. On the ragged edge of town, near Rakuninmura, he ducks into a gambling hall. The marks ignore him, too absorbed in trying to escape their debts using the same tool that got them into debt. The dice-rollers, enforcers, pushers all stare after him warily. Aoshi shifts the weight of his kodachi on his shoulder and ignores them all.

The marks are utterly irrelevant. He might pity them, if they were worth even that much notice. The Yakuza thugs are a consideration, but a minor one.

"Move," he tells two guards standing on either side of a curtain.

They don't argue. They simply stand aside.

The curtain hides a short passage to a back room, where the local boss sits with a few of his more direct underlings. Aoshi notes a pair of women with eyes dulled by exhaustion and a boy who looks like he's had any hope of dignity beaten thoroughly out of him.

How many faces like that will he see if he returns to the village where Misao was assaulted and actually looks for the signs? (That she herself could have worn such an expression is inconceivable... until he recalls the sudden meekness when confronted by the town doctor.)

"Shinomori," the local boss says, inclining his head.

Aoshi nods.

Rather than invite him to sit — not that Aoshi would if asked — the boss says, "Can't see what you want from us since Takeda went down. Not sure what you have to offer, either."

So he still has the stature in Tokyo's cess pit shadow-world to scare the dumb muscle, but not enough to win some courtesy from their boss? Interesting.

"Invent a debt," he says.

"I'll get right on that." The boss raises an eyebrow. His nose is thick, bulbous, and yet squashed from being broken five too many times. This one rose to power from the street. "As soon as you tell me what you have to trade for it. Is the infamous Oniwabanshuu going to owe the Yakuza a favor?"

"You'll get my forbearance."

The eyebrow climbs higher. "Your forbearance?"

"Invent the debt or I dismantle your operation." He looks around the room, at the thugs and under-bosses, and adds, "Piece by piece."

Apparently his activities after Takeda's arrest and the deaths of his men have been remarked upon, have made their way into the mix of rumor, hearsay, and baldfaced lie that makes up the underworld's information pool. The boss goes pale. It doesn't take a trained spy to see the thoughts flickering through his head: _this one is crazy enough to do it_.

As little as he likes using that reputation, he doesn't correct the impression. So long as the Yakuza cooperates, he has no reason to care what they think of him. The results are what matter. He now has a failsafe, in case he should be discovered or Misao threatened.

* * *

 

ix.

They time their arrival in the tiny farming town until after sundown and the dinner hour. Aoshi watches from the shadows as Misao slips inside the little minshuku, waits until she flings open a window and leans out. She takes a deep breath of the freezing night air, but otherwise betrays no surprise when he makes his way to the ledge.

Instead, she smiles.

Once within, he lays out his plan: remove the doctor first. Permit the opportunity for any living victim to press charges against Tanaka Tadashi. When that inevitably fails, eliminate Tanaka.

"You're... sure the police won't pay any attention?"

"Aa."

"But there are police like Saitou and that sword-hunter guy. The police might care, right? And won't it look suspicious if some guy I bring a complaint against dies?"

That takes him aback. Had she expected to be the one to press charges?

"Misao. Do you... not seek his death?"

She curls her knees to her chest and looks at him in silence for a long moment. At last, she says, "I don't know. He... he'll never stop unless someone makes him. So he deserves to die, right? Or at least go to prison for a long time."

Aoshi does not say how unlikely it is that Tanaka will be imprisoned But she must read it in his expression, because she closes her eyes.

"Stupid, isn't it? To hope that maybe the police will do their jobs and you won't have to --" She opens her eyes, looks up at him. "It shouldn't be you. I know you're planning on being the one, but I'm the one who -- it shouldn't be you."

"It should," he tells her. He would kill again, kill a thousand times without remorse, so long as it meant she was not betrayed by a justice she trusted and left with only one option.

"Why?"

Who better than he, to kill on behalf of the Oniwabanshuu?

Aoshi says nothing. But he looks at his hands for a moment. When he looks back at her, he sees the beginning of understanding.

* * *

I've disconnected my heart  
And cut myself on the wires  
—The Wallflowers, "Josephine"


	5. won't you come and help me with these cuts of mine

i.

After that, Misao does not question that it should be him. They discuss other matters — or, rather, Misao mentions other things, small, useful details about the townsfolk and the town's current disposition interspersed with the scattered, sunlit recollections and impulses that comprise her thinking.

When she finally sleeps, Aoshi makes his way to the window to take in the town's full layout. He has to stop moving several times and stand completely still, once holding his breath, to keep from waking her. He closes the window shutter in silence and waits, but doesn't hear her stir.

It's not a large town. Its buildings all cluster close together, making his attempt to navigate it from above easier. He stops, briefly, on the wall sheltering what appears to be a dormant garden. He sees a gate and a myriad of brown plants, and though he does not know, he can guess. He moves on, identifying landmarks, bolt holes, assets.

He catalogs locations. Long, long after moon-rise — when just a few scant hours of night remain — he returns to the minshuku. It's an easy climb, would be even for someone of Misao's height, even if she had been injured. In fact, he finds it entirely unsurprising that she would have chosen the climb in response to her injuries. Though the Edo Castle cell never taught her paranoia, onmitsu reflexes ingrain far easier.

She wakes when he slides open the shutter. He watches her reach for her weapons in a long, smooth movement, but then she tilts her head and listens.

"Aoshi-sama?"

"Aa."

"I hate it here," she says, as if that explains everything. Perhaps it does.

"Aa."

She looks up to give him a sleepy smile — in the dim light, he receives a faint impression of heavy-lidded eyes and a sweet, gentle curve of her mouth — and says, softly, "Come to bed."

 _Come to bed._ Not _Will you sleep?_ , not a suggestion that he retire to his own bed, not a comment on how late it is. An invitation? Or simply a symptom of exhaustion?

"Misao?"

"It's easier when I'm not alone." She pauses to yawn, then adds, "You have nightmares when you're alone."

He does. He knows he does. Aoshi nods his understanding, but she doesn't seem to see it, or is perhaps too tired to read him the way she usually does.

"Please," she says, and shifts on the futon, turning her back to him but leaving a space. And then she's asleep again, breath deep and even, heartbeat slow.

She probably won't remember asking in the morning. Or she might. Aoshi unlaces his boots, shrugs out of his gi but leaves the under shirt on, and crawls into bed.

Beside him, Misao stirs once, then sighs and goes still.

* * *

ii.

Aoshi wakes just before dawn to realize he has turned over in his sleep, nearly encircling Misao in his arms. She still has her back to him. He doesn't remember moving, doesn't recall if he woke in the night or not.

The same instinct that has him watching crowds, looking into shadows, avoiding alcohol and opium and the beds of others whispers that he has slept too heavily. He slept like an idiot, like a dead man.

Slowly, he disentangles himself from her. Despite the care he takes, Misao startles awake immediately. She flushes when she sees him, but she doesn't seem scared or displeased. Her mouth curls into a sleepy, contented smile.

"You stayed by me."

He arches a brow, then smooths away the expression and says, "You hate it here."

She knows him well enough to know he is neither merely quoting her words back to her nor expressing solely his own sentiments. Her eyes widen in understanding.

Aoshi rises, shrugging into his gi and re-tying his obi. They'll speak of this later. For now, he has Tanaka Tadashi and his doctor father to take care of. He'll spend today and tomorrow shadowing them. He knows the town's potential bolt holes. Now to learn where these particular rats will run.

"I'll return by sundown," he tells her. "Move about the town as you wish."

"Where will you be?"

"Working," he says.

Misao looks away. He goes, and if she looks back to him, he does not see it before he closes the window shutter.

* * *

iii.

The town seems no more lively during the day than it had the night before, and even more dead than it had on his last visit. The dusty streets had been golden brown in summer's lazy sunlight. Today, under a sky that threatens snow, the town looks gray. Bleak and worn, every building ramshackle and every face tired or old.

Only a few people trade goods in the streets. Aoshi notes that certain women – a greater number than he'd expected; does Tanaka Tadashi see this town as some private hunting ground? – seem reluctant to stir far from their homes and do not do so alone. Even a few of the women who do wander more than a few houses away look constantly over their shoulders.

Knowing what happened to Misao is like having the key to a cipher. The town's sleepy, watchful air makes sense now.

Aoshi wanders until mid-day, watching and listening. At mid-day he searches out the town's physicians.

And finds that Tanaka Ichiro, yes, the father of Tanaka Tadashi, such a nice boy – said without feeling, as if by rote – is the only doctor. There's a midwife, Atsumi-san.

He takes his leave, caring only distantly that Tanaka-sensei has been pushing to be the one to deliver the town's next births, few as those will be. He'll kill Tanaka Tadashi, but he's not doing it to protect some tiny farming village two days walk from Tokyo. He's correcting a man who harmed Misao, who will only continue to harm others, in the only way he can.

In the end, this place is lucky he doesn't burn every house to the ground. Two years ago, someone heard Misao scream and chose not to act. Condemned a fourteen year old girl to –

He unclenches his fist and ducks into an alley. He takes several deep, slow breaths. It helps the tightness in his chest.

Until he notices the other man. His build is as Misao described: heavy-set, but with the random blend of fat and muscle that hints at intermittent labor. His jawline and brow look like Tanaka Ichiro's, but the resemblance is stronger in the way he stands.

"Tanaka Tadashi," he says.

The Tanaka boy smirks at him. The expression makes him look older, as if he's in his early twenties, perhaps Takani Megumi's age. "I've seen you around here."

Aoshi says nothing.

"With that slut from out of town. The short, skinny one. You know who I'm talking about."

Every muscle in his body tenses. His hands curl into fists again, so tight his nails dig into his gloves. But Aoshi forces himself not to move. If he rises to the Tanaka boy's bait, the fool will only escalate matters. And Aoshi knows what he will do if that happens.

He tries to keep his tone neutral. "Slut?"

"Oh, did she tell you she was a virgin? She's about the size to pass for one, isn't she?" A pause and an evaluating glance. "Well that's a grim look, stranger. Be reasonable."

"Reasonable?"

Tanaka's tone is jovial, as if this is a perfectly normal conversation. That may be the most unsettling part of this encounter. "You've seen what she wears. I understand you're fond of her, but it's not like she has any honor left to defend."

And whose fault is that? No. Remember the plan. Keep to the plan. Do not strike out, no matter how much he needs a broken jaw. Aoshi imagines the hit nonetheless, in such detail it could be a fantasy: moving forward too quickly to be predicted, his fist whistling through the air, impact, the feeling of Tanaka's jaw shattering at his touch.

"You're using how she dresses as a defense?"

"You know, I don't think I like how this is going." Tanaka makes an odd, furtive motion with his right hand. "Try and see things from my side, huh? _She_ came to _me_. I might have been a little rough, but just because she regretted it in the morning, she told you I assaulted her or who knows what."

A knife. That furtive motion was him reaching for a knife.

Aoshi shakes his head. "No."

The knife glints in the air as Tanaka charges. Aoshi hears the words _She wanted it_ , but he's already in motion. It's simple, easy, instinctive to dodge the blade and catch Tanaka by the arm, at hand and elbow. He grinds the bones of the other man's wrist against each other and plucks the knife from the air as it falls.

It is possible to perform the Kaiten Kenbu with a tanto, but Aoshi doesn't bother. He simply whirls in place, letting momentum carry his knife-hand toward Tanaka's throat. The point slides in easily, burying two inches of folded steel into the soft meat of Tanaka's neck. After a moment, Aoshi jerks it out.

Tanaka slumps, eyes wide. He wheezes, trying to force air into or out of his lungs. It whistles past the hole the dagger made.

Aoshi shifts his grip on the tanto. He plants it in Tanaka's throat again, this time uses it to make shallow cuts. He's only dimly aware of what he's doing, cognizant mostly of the need for all noise coming from Tanaka Tadashi's mouth to stop. He peels flaps of skin back, exposing the filthy windpipe that won't stop trying to supply air. He cuts the skin away, tosses it somewhere into the alley.

The knife flashes down. Once. Twice. Again. Aoshi digs his fingers into the windpipe, removes it in chunks that he drops in the dust. Bloody gobbets of skin and fat cling to his fingers, burrow under his nails.

When Tanaka's throat looks like a flayed ruin shredded by wild dogs – skin splayed and the spokes of his spine visible – and he does not hear the drip of blood from the corpse, Aoshi stops. He realizes his hands are shaking.

Then he closes his eyes. He'd had a plan. It had been a good one. Now he has to deal with a body and he isn't certain of where Tanaka Ichiro lives.

* * *

iv.

In the end, he stores Tanaka Tadashi's body in one of the bolt holes he found last night. The sky's steel gray hue has hardened, has sharpened, and Aoshi tastes stinging, burning cold just a few seconds before the first flake falls.

He watches the white flurries for a few moments, considering. Then he empties his canteen over the largest of the bloodstains on the ground, swirls the mud around with his boot. It's poor camouflage, but the air all but hisses a promise of ice. Snow will cover the rest; he'll simply have to make sure Misao is out of sight before it melts.

He pauses in the minshuku's bathhouse to scrub the evidence from his face and hands. His fingerless gloves got so thoroughly soaked in blood that he has to peel them away. They leave rust-brown streaks on his arms and palms; he still has scraps of flesh under his fingernails.

Aoshi closes his eyes once more. He feels no guilt at the murder; he has long come to terms with the idea of killing again. But to do so by reflex and follow it up with some unthinking fit of passion?

It feels uncomfortably like backsliding.

He has just reached their floor when he realizes Misao isn't in their room. He turns around in the staircase and heads back downstairs, stopping at each floor to listen for Misao's heartbeat. When he doesn't hear her, he listens for hearts in distress, but doesn't hear that, either.

At last he finds her in the kitchen. There's a faint, dry rasping sound – a knife against... something. Vegetables? The last of autumn's fruit? – and the scent of rice boiling until it's sticky.

She turns toward him as he steps into the kitchen. There's a tray of chopped vegetables in front of her and a huge pot of rice on the boil.

Misao's mouth curves up. And then her nostrils flare, nose wrinkling and eyes widening. "A-Aoshi-sama? Is any of that yours? There's no way any of that's yours, is there?"

He looks down at himself, realizing that he must still stink of blood. "No."

She smiles again. Wider, this time. "Good. I didn't think it was, but..."

"It's Tanaka's," he says. "Tadashi's."

Misao's grip on the knife tightens for an instant when she hears the name, but then she relaxes. "He's dead, then?"

"Aa."

Misao closes her eyes and sets the knife down entirely. When she opens her eyes again and looks at him, her expression is a jumble of emotion. He sees guilt and relief flicker across her face. The rest passes too quickly to identify.

"Thank you," she says.

He merely shakes his head once. Later, if she asks, he will explain that killing Tadashi was a reflex, however richly he deserved it. And there is no need to burden her with the way this will interfere with his plans.

"Misao."

She hadn't returned to her task – Misao could never care about such things with him present – but she jerks toward him nonetheless. "Yes, Aoshi-sama?"

"Remain out of sight for a few days."

"Yes, Aoshi-sama." She nods, then shifts her weight on the balls of her feet. It's a shy, uncertain gesture.

"Yes?"

"Was it, I don't know, difficult? To kill again, I mean."

"No," he says. He does not tell her how easy it was.

* * *

v.

Aoshi skips dinner. Instead, he scrubs the rest of the blood from his skin – it soaked through his uniform and now sticks to his shoulders, stinking of iron and salt – and finds that his bangs have tangled and matted together with it. He closes his eyes to keep out any mixture of blood, water, and soap, then dunks his head in a bucket of lukewarm water.

No wonder Misao worried.

Aoshi pushes the thought away and keeps scrubbing, until his skin pinkens and turns raw from the friction. He carves the skin and meat from beneath his fingernails and then washes his hair again.

When he finally steps, half-dry and almost clean, into the changing room, his uniform has been swapped by some silent, efficient soul for a yukata.

She really is getting better. He hadn't heard her enter.

He steps into their shared room to find Misao sitting next to a lidded bucket, carefully taking a small knife to the seams of his uniform. Apparently she's decided that an intense wash will remove the blood. The bucket, he suspects, is to soak the worst of it away before she washes.

At the sound of his heartbeat, Misao looks up from knife and fabric. "I brought up some dinner for you," she says. "Uhm. If you're hungry at all. If you can't, it's no big deal, I'll just –"

"Thank you."

He watches her a moment. She's pinned her braid up and tucked her hair behind her ears. She does not return her attention to his uniform. Instead, she stares at him just as intently as he does her.

He wonders if his actions, his choices, have driven some sort of wedge between them. Perhaps it is simply the same gap there has always been – the one between the Okashira and his lieutenant's ward, between the killer and the spottily-trained kunoichi – and she is merely seeing it for the first time.

No, he thinks. Surely, if she can forgive his invasion of her privacy, if she can forgive his madness after the deaths of his men, she can forgive this.

"You haven't asked," he says.

Misao looks confused for a moment. She sets the uniform down entirely and says, quietly, "I wasn't sure you wanted me to."

"What?"

She smiles, but the mirth is tempered by something. "I just… well, I wasn't sure. You killed a man for me, and I'm glad he's dead, and it's my fault we're even here."

Aoshi suspects he knows where she's going with this. "He attacked me," he says, wondering just what she thinks happened. She knows he would not deviate from his original plan without good reason. Doesn't she?

"I'm sure he did, Aoshi-sama." Her tone doesn't quite convince him that she believes him. Perhaps he doesn't entirely believe himself. He could have brushed past, could have walked away. "But it's still my fault we're here. And I thought it might be a little blood thirsty to ask."

But she wanted to know. Didn't she? He's never truly had this much trouble reading her, not even when she had first entered Hannya's care, and no small part of him finds it frustrating.

Her says her name. His tone is sharp, demanding full attention.

Just as always, she seems to jerk back to focus. Considering that she was already focused on him, it makes her seem hyper-aware.

"Aoshi-sama?"

"Do you regret accompanying me on this?"

She looks down. Her eyes drift closed, lashes dark against pale cheeks framed by dark hair. Her mouth opens just a little as she takes in a deep breath.

He knows what she she's going to say. And it hurts.

She looks up at him, locks gazes, and says, "No."

And she isn't lying. He can't read her, doesn't see anything he can interpret in her face, but her heartbeat is calm and her breaths are even. She isn't lying.

The tightness in his chest eases. He settles himself at the low table provided in the room, not far from her.

"Then...?"

"I'm _worried_ about you." Misao smiles for him, but it's still not her usual smile. "And I don't want to be the reason you start killing again."

Has he stopped, really? Shishio is dead – though that was a pre-existing medical issue; he, Saitou, Himura, even Sagara merely exacerbated it – Gein is dead. He did not kill the man with Wu Hei Shin, but that was out of respect for Himura's principles.

He does not voice this doubt.

He hopes Misao does not see it.

* * *

vi.

Misao sleeps beside him again that night. Some part of him is immensely gratified that she isn't turning away from him. The rest of him is unsettled. She knows he killed a man tonight, with such force and savagery that he'd nearly ruined a uniform, had been picking blood out of his fingernails for hours.

And yet she still wishes to be near him. Still worries about him.

He hears her breathing and heartbeat slow. Somehow, being curled up against him – even back to back as they are – is relaxing for her. His touch really does ward away nightmares.

But then she stirs, in what he'd assumed to be her last lazy moments before sleep, and asks, "So what happened?"

He tells her. Her reaction is indignant at first, that Tanaka would dare try to blame his own actions on her. As he explains the details, he hears her draw in a breath.

Aoshi is tempted, so tempted, to turn to face her. He doesn't. He can't.

Instead, Misao rolls over. He hears her move, then suddenly feels her breath warm against his shoulder. He hears her reach for him and forces himself to relax into her feather-light touch against his knuckles.

"You're angry with yourself," she says, quietly.

"I had a plan."

"You did what was right."

No. No he didn't. His stomach clenches at the wrongness of Misao telling him that in this context. But he dismisses the feeling as irrational. If any human being alive has the right to wish Tanakda Tadashi dead, it's Misao. He has no right to say she shouldn't wish it, shouldn't express satisfaction at having that wish granted.

It is not blood-thirst. It's human nature.

"Carving out his windpipe so he would be quiet?"

Misao is silent. He hears her plea for an explanation even without her saying a word.

"He kept trying to talk," he says. It's not much of an explanation, but it should suffice.

He expects her to express horror. He expects her to back away from him, to stumble to the cabinet and prepare a second futon. As little as she seems to enjoy sleeping alone, surely it's preferable to sleeping beside a murderer.

But all Misao says is, "You know, he never shut up when he was with me. I'm sorry you had to listen to him, too."

For a moment, he can say nothing. Eventually, he finds words enough to tell her, "You won't have justice. Only vengeance."

Misao's reply is slurred with sleep. "It's still good he's gone."

Then she falls asleep. She's next to him, warm against the small of his back. He isn't alone. And yet he is: alone with the darkness in the room and the thing inside him that demanded Tanaka Tadashi's blood.

The worst of it is he thinks he could live like this. This is a bad night, but tomorrow night will be better. And the night after that?

* * *

You never looked so down  
Won't you come and help me with these cuts of mine?  
—The Wallflowers, "Josephine"


	6. i know you've been sad

i.

Aoshi waits until Misao has fallen asleep before he disentangles himself from her and dresses in a spare uniform.  He makes his way out the window and carefully up to the roof.  The snow is loose, powdery, nearly tripping him; the air hasn't yet cooled enough to permit the kind of snow that works to an onmitsu's advantage at night.

At least he doesn't have to contend with ice he can't see.

Finding the gambling hall is as simple as roving the rooftops and finding the one business still open.  In a town this small, he suspects it caters to all vices, from alcohol to whores.

The Yakuza have embraced this so-called peaceful new era and prospered.  Surely the Oniwabanshuu can do the same.  But that's a thought for later.

He makes his way through the tiny establishment, half-heartedly disguised as a tea house.  After the chill of the snowy air, the tea house seems too hot.  He almost starts to sweat.  He quashes the discomfort and raises an eyebrow at the thugs who protect the establishment's boss; they move aside without a word from him.

In his office, the boss pauses in lighting a particularly large opium pipe.  His nose is crooked, as if frequently broken, just like the boss Aoshi met with in Tokyo; Aoshi wonders if he's related to Miura or simply ran in the same street gang in their youth.  His hands tremble, but he doesn't seem in the least intimidated.  Withdrawal, then.  

"You've received Miura's message?"

"Just this morning," the boss grunts.  He nods to a brazier piled with ash.  

It's the only sign of clutter or mess in the entire office; everything else seems to have a proper place.  This is the first _neat_ opium addict Aoshi has ever seen.  He's certainly never heard of the Yakuza tolerating its employees dipping their hands into the product.

Perhaps Nishimura simply wants others to think he's an addict.   They'll assume it gives them leverage, when it doesn't.  Though _that_ theory assumes a surprising amount of craft for a man assigned to a farming town that doesn't even have a proper name.

"I'm calling in the marker."

Nishimura casts a longing look at the pipe before nodding.  "Right.  You want us to go now?"

"No.  Tomorrow.  Sundown."

The other man seems to relax a little, some of the tension visibly draining away at the realization that he has tonight to get his fix.  The trembling in his hands is pronounced.  In the light, his eyes look fevered.  Sweat beads on his forehead.  "Right.  Okay.  Who is it and what are we blackmailing him with?"

A vicious little thrill runs through Aoshi, its teeth like tiny needles along his spine, as he says, eununciating every word, "Tanaka Ichiro.  The murder of his son."

* * *

ii.  
  
There are questions from there: how the boss is to know of the so-called murder, which house is Tanaka Ichiro's.  Aoshi insists that he and an associate be permitted to witness the blackmailing. He is not sure Misao will wish to attend, but he will ensure that she is able to if she does.  
  
After that,  he takes the roofs to the bolt hole in which he stashed Tanaka Tadashi's body.  The snow camouflages his movements above the town, but he's not fool enough to run rooftops carrying a corpse.  
  
That, he walks the streets with.  Between the town's shabby lack of lanterns and the falling snow, anyone who sees them will see one drunk helping another, less conscious fool find his way home.  He has to suppress several shivers on the way there.  Tanaka Tadashi's skin is clammy and stiff, chilled by the early winter air, and that chill seems to be spreading to Aoshi.  
  
The doctor's home is attached the garden he saw on his first night here.  Now, more than ever, he is certain that Misao was assaulted in that garden.  
  
He leans the body against the gate, then vaults the walls and opens it.  The garden is gated off from the main house as a sop to disguising its ownership.  The wall between home and garden is tall, sturdy wood; its gate is closed and locked from the house's side.  
  
Perfect.  Aoshi leaves the garden to grab the corpse, leaves it sprawling amidst dead flowers and fallen leaves. Some part of him wonders which collection of dried leaves and withered stems was once the patch of lilies that drew Misao down from the roof.  
  
He ignores it, closing and locking the gate, then vaulting the wall again.  From there, he takes the roofs back to the inn.

* * *

iii.  
  
Aoshi considers just crawling into bed next to Misao, smothering his mind's constant workings by basking in warmth after the chill he's been working in all night.  But the very idea of Misao sleeping beside him while he stinks of a gambling house and a dead man is... wrong.  
  
So he stops by the bath house again.  Once again, he draws water for a quick scrub.  He doesn't bother heating it; he'll soon be warm, regardless.  Like before, he simply scrubs down and rinses off as quickly and thoroughly as he can without even trying for a real bath.  Earlier, he merely wanted the blood off; now he wants to escape the smell.  
  
He realizes, as he heads to the stair, that he's been doing a lot of bathing recently.  Were Misao not here, he would have no qualms about simply collapsing into bed.  Exhaustion and need for warmth would lull him into a near-dreamless sleep.  
  
Misao has moved since he left.  She's asleep still, but now she has curled up near the window.  
  
She noticed his absence.  Guilt squirms, obscure and irrational, through his stomach.  He quashes both sensation and sentiment, then kneels near Misao to wake her.  
  
He has to rest his hand against her shoulder and say her name twice to wake her.  She wakes with an immediate jerk for her knives, eyes wide.  She gasps for breath and presses a hand to her chest when he moves backward.  
  
"Aoshi-sama," she says, very quietly.  "I wasn't sure where you'd gone."  
  
Worried for him again.  Or worried for the rest of this town?  
  
"I had a failsafe."  Slowly, carefully, he places his left hand on her other shoulder.  She tips her head back to look up at him.  "Tanaka Ichiro will live."  
  
Will live beneath blackmail, burdened with the same vile lies he made his son's victims live beneath.  Buried beneath and desperate to conceal a lie as vile as his words to Misao.  Not legal justice, but fitting enough.  
  
"You're letting him live?  But won't he tell the police?"  
  
"He won't.  Tomorrow night, if you'd like to watch it done...?"  
  
"I'll be there," she says.  Then she casts a troubled glance at his hands.  
  
Aoshi lifts his hands from her shoulders, suddenly reminded of the size difference between them.  Not even kneeling can really mitigate it.  
  
Misao reaches for him.  He goes still, lets her catch him by one wrist.  She presses the back of her hand against his fingers and  then his palm.  
  
"You're freezing," she says, voice soft and eyes bright in the dark room.  
  
He hadn't felt it until then.

* * *

iv.  
  
The next morning, they pack.  Misao scours the room, leaving it as if no one has been there.  She then heads down to speak to the okami.  Aoshi has the money to bribe silence from her, but Misao claims to have some sort of leverage.  
  
Just a few moments later, Misao returns from her chat with a smile curling along her face.  
  
"Ogata-san hasn't seen us since summer.  Or any other strangers in town."  Misao pauses for a moment, expression turning briefly sad.  "She told me what happened to Tanaka Tadashi's sister."  
  
"His first victim?"  
  
Misao nods.  
  
Useful.  She has no idea, but she's just handed him a missing piece of his lie: Tanaka Ichiro's motive for killing his own son and leaving his corpse in that garden.  Aoshi had planned to use a simple argumen.  This will make a certain amount of terrible sense to the town.  
  
Only Ogata will know any different.  The mericless arithmatic of onmitsu work means Ogata should have some sort of accident following their departure from this town.  And yet Aoshi cannot truly imagine himself killing the woman.  He adds and subtracts in his head, finally content to let Ogata know, and live, and keep her silence.  
  
She has as much reason as Misao to want Tanaka Tadashi dead.  
  
After that, the day passes slowly.  They drift through the town unseen, finally wending their way to the tea shop just before sundown.  
  
Misao's nose wrinkles at the sight of the place.  So Aoshi chooses not to go inside; they'll wait for the boss out here.  
  
He emerges exactly at sundown, scans the rooftops for a moment before concluding that there's no way he'd spot Aoshi there.  He cups his hands around his mouth and lights a cigarette.  Aoshi considers the size of the pipe he saw last night and realizes that the man is addicted to tobacco, not opium.  
  
"Nishimura."  Aoshi steps out from the hidden shelter of a building.  After a moment, Misao follows him, wide-eyed.  
  
The boss turns to look at them.  His eyes narrow as he sees Misao, but then he gives a half shrug.  Aoshi looks to Misao, wondering what it's about, but she doesn't seem to have any particular grudge in return.  
  
Interesting, but if Nishimura isn't going to cause problems, then it can wait.  On the way to Tanaka's home, Aoshi apprises Nishimura of Tanaka's supposed motivation for killing his son and the body's location.

* * *

v.  
  
Two thugs open the door of Tanaka's home.  Nishimura, Aoshi, and Misao follow them.  Misao peers at Tanaka's furnishings.  He sees her eye a few trinkets before, for some reason, apparently deciding to leave them alone.  
  
They find Tanaka in his office.  He's looking at a map of the town and surrounding area, tracing his fingers over lines, muttering to himself.  If Aoshi truly cared to listen, he could do so easily, but he lets the words blur into meaningless sounds.  
  
"Tanaka-sensei," Nishimura says.  
  
Tanaka jerks around.  His eyes dart wildly at the sight of Aoshi and Misao, gaze moving so  frantically between -- first to Misao, then back to Aoshi, then back to Misao, where it rests heavily for almost all of a second -- that he doesn't seem to see the Yakuza.  
  
"It's come to our attention that you've experienced a personal tragedy," Nishimura continues, voice smooth and sincere.  "You have our deepest condolences.  Unfortunately, in this new era, the police might not prove so understanding."  
  
Tanaka stares at them blankly for a moment.  Then he looks at Misao.  Color rises in his cheeks, then darkens as blood begins to pool in his face.  
  
"You've killed him," he hisses at Misao.  "I told you if anything happened to him I'd --"  
  
Time to cut in.  Aoshi moves so that Misao is left standing slightly behind him.  "The police will not help you."  
  
"I'm the town doctor!"  
  
"You murdered your own son," Nishimura says.  He spreads his hands.  "Perfectly understandable, really, considering what you must have felt when you found out about your daughter.  But the law doesn't understand human considerations like that."  
  
"I haven't seen him since the day before yesterday!"  
  
"You mean you haven't checked your own winter garden in two days?  You expect the police to believe that?"  Nishimura's mouth hardens into a thin smile.  "I'll remind you, we _own_ the police."  
  
Aoshi watches the blood drain from Tanaka's face.  His gaze flicks to Misao.  Her eyes are still wide, though she doesn't seem particularly startled or horrified.  Slowly, slowly, her head tilts to one side, as if there's an invisible weight hanging from it.  Her lips begin to curve up.  
  
Tanaka looks at Aoshi again, then back to Misao.  "You promised you'd stay quiet.  Why did you have to tell anyone?"  
  
Misao stiffens again.  When she says nothing, Tanaka adds, bitterly, "I should have poisoned you when I had the chance."  
  
The room goes quiet.  Nishimura swivels his head to look askance at Aoshi before turning to face Tanaka again.  
  
"You've poisoned your son's victims?"  Aoshi's voice sounds strange in the sudden quiet, ringing softly through the room.  
  
"You killed my boy because you want a piece of _that_ filthy little thing.  You think I'd hesitate for my own flesh and blood?"  
  
Aoshi raises an eyebrow, saying nothing.  Instead, he merely looks at Tanaka for a long moment, not bothering to hide what he sees.  
  
Nishimura clears his throat.  "In any case --"  
  
"No.  Before you blackmail me, I want to hear from him."  Tanaka points at Aoshi. "What have you done with Tadashi?"  
  
"Nothing."  
  
Aoshi watches the word strike home.  Just as before,  a thrill runs sharp nails up and down along his spine at the way Tanaka begins to break.  
  
"Where is my boy?" He pleads of Nishimura.  "Please. What have you done with him?"  
  
"A concerned citizen heard the two of you arguing.  Now, as I said, I can see the reason for what you've done.  Terrible thing to lose a daughter that way.  So I'm offering --"  
  
"You've got nothing to offer me without my son's body.  I'll... I'll go straight to the police."  
  
"Who won't believe you," Nishimura says flatly.  
  
"I don't care."  
  
Nishimura sucks in a breath and finally shrugs.  "Well, if you'd really like a reminder of where you stored your son's corpse..."  
  
With that, the Yakuza thugs begin to escort Tanaka from the room.  Aoshi is content to stay, to wait, but Misao follows them.  So he follows her.  
  
They catch up with the group just before Tanaka, trembling, withdraws a key from his sleeve.  He unlocks the garden gate and slowly pulls the wooden doors open.  He takes a few steps into the garden.  At the sight of Tadashi, he falls to his knees.  He reaches out to touch one of Tadashi's visible vertebrae, hands trembling.  
  
"My boy," he sobs.  "My boy, my boy, my boy."  
  
Neither Aoshi nor Misao says anything.  Misao looks to Aoshi.  He looks back for only a moment before returning his attention to Tanaka.  
  
Tanaka cradles the monster he raised and begins to rock back and forth.  
  
After a few moments, Aoshi reaches out to place his hand on Misao's shoulder.  She's watching Tanaka intently and doesn't move away, but betrays no surprise at his touch.  He squeezes, gently, and tilts his head to indicate that they should most likely go.  
  
Misao follows him a few paces away.  "That was where it happened," she says, softly.  
  
"Aa."  
  
"You dumped him right where tossed my _sarashi_."  
  
Aoshi says nothing to that.  That, at least, had been unintentional.  
  
Nishimura begins to murmur.  "You work for us now, Tanaka-sensei.  That's in addition to some monetary compensation.  You understand, of course.  Otherwise the police will have to know what your son did to your daughter, and what you did to your son."  
  
Tanaka mumbles an incoherent affirmative.  
  
And it's over.  Tanaka Tadashi is dead. Tanaka Ichiro will live out the rest of his life beneath blackmail, constantly in fear.  
  
What justice there is in this so-called new era, Misao has received.

* * *

vi.

They leave town immediately after.

Misao turns around to look, just before the town vanishes into the horizon behind them.  He can see on her face the knowledge that they won't be back.

* * *

I know you've been sad  
I know I've been bad  
But if you'd let me  
I'd make you ribbons from a paper bag.  
—The Wallflowers, "Josephine"


	7. and I know it ain't easy

i.

Between the snow and the darkness, the road seems to blur as they travel. Aoshi knows they won't get far, but they need to put at least some distance between themselves and this pathetic little town.

Misao does not have his endurance. The chill saps her strength sooner than his. Eventually, she stumbles to a halt and places her palms against her knees, trying to force air into lungs too frozen to cooperate.

"I can't," she gasps.

Alone, he could push another few miles. Tonight, he stops. He's the one to erect a windscreen. It will keep the snow off, at least. Misao curls up in his arms, pillows her head on his chest. He allows himself to rest a hand on her back before he tugs thick blankets over them.

Sometime that night, while he slips hazily in and out of sleep to check their surroundings, Misao begins to shake. Her skin is warm against him, so she isn't shivering from cold.

He says her name.

She looks up at him, eyes red-rimmed and not tired in the least. And he begins to realize that though he has drowsed, she has remained awake and surprisingly still this entire time.

He places his hand on her back again, to make sure she realizes she is not alone. She does not have to bear this alone, whatever it is that burdens her.

"I didn't expect monsters like Tanaka-sensei to cry," Misao whispers against his chest. "But now that I know... I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad I saw all of it. I needed to and I'm not sure why. It's just it finally feels _over_."

Shikijou whispers in his memory — fresh as if it were happening now, even across all these years — _It's never over_.

"I want to ask you if that's wrong, but you'll tell me it's not. I don't think you'll ever believe I could be really awful."

That last statement reminds Aoshi of all that she has forgiven him. There is too much history behind any reply he could make to it. It would be irrelevant, in the face of her greater worry.

"Misao. There is no wrong reaction." 

She smiles for a moment, quick and fleeting. He misses it when it's gone. She settles in more closely against him, and within moments, he allows himself to drowse again.

* * *

ii.

The walk to Tokyo should have been two days. With the snow and cold sapping their progress, it takes four. They reach Tokyo's ragged edge just after the noon hour.

By that point, sheer stubbornness is the only thing keeping Misao walking. 

Class is in session when they arrive, so it 's Himura who shows them to the guest room. He watches Aoshi closely, but then Himura has always been more watchful than his blithe manner would suggest.

Misao doesn't seem to notice. She flings her bag down and collapses wearily on top of it. She chatters near-incoherently about being glad to be indoors at last.

And Himura smiles gently at her. "I am sure Kaoru-dono will be happy to see you, that I am. And you are always welcome here, Aoshi, though I wonder why you did not write first."

That's a sharp-edged question. So Aoshi does not pause. "We were in the area. Misao wished to see Kamiya when our errand was done."

Himura raises a brow for an instant, but then he seems to decide he doesn't wish to pry. He turns his attention back to Misao, tells her that Kamiya should finish classes by late afternoon. Assuming her afternoon students even attend.

Misao nods along. Then her mouth curls into a mischievous smile.

"Would she mind if I watched? Just watched, I promise."

"I see no harm, that I do not," Himura says. And with that Misao heads out of the room, bobbing a quick bow to Aoshi and leaving Himura with a jaunty wave.

Himura turns to Aoshi. He waits to speak until they both hear the door close as Misao ventures out to the dojo.

"What errand could you have to run near Tokyo that would keep you from writing?"

Aoshi hesitates. Himura knows full well that Aoshi has always intended to keep Misao free of the Oniwabanshuu's activities, so he would not bring her here on any matter related to the Oniwabanshuu. But a full explanation is not his to make; he will not violate Misao's trust or privacy.

At length, he replies with a question: "Has Misao mentioned a farming village two days from Rakuninmura?"

"She has not."

"A matter there required her attention." He falls silent, knowing that Himura will hear his refusal to explain further.

Himura nods. But throughout the afternoon, until Misao and Kamiya return from the dojo, Himura's gaze drops every so often to Aoshi's hands. And Aoshi knows that he knows, but has decided not to judge. For now, at least.

* * *

iii.

Dinner is a noisy affair. 

Kamiya and Misao team up against Myoujin regarding his apparent affection for one of the employees of the Akabeko. Myoujin, in turn, teases them both — referring to Misao as a weasel, an epithet Aoshi has never entirely understood — while Himura simply watches, apparently content not to become involved.

Ordinarily, Aoshi would let the name slide. He spent his time in Tokyo after the Yukishiro incident doing precisely that. Misao certainly seems no more bothered by it than anything else Myoujin does.

But he is uncertain of its associations. Now seems as good a time as any to ask. So he does.

Myoujin and Misao stare at him, startled. Myoujin's eyebrows rise in curiosity. He shrugs. "I don't know, Saitou and Sano call her that. It just fits."

"Saitou started it," Misao grumbles at the same time. "Don't ask me why, he just started doing it."

Myoujin rests his the back of his head against his hands, elbows up. "It could always be worse. I remember when Megumi was calling Kaoru here a sweaty kendo girl."

"We'd just met. Megumi was pretty attached to Kenshin back then," Kamiya says, tone mild.

"Ouch," Misao replies. She winces theatrically, then stands and stretches. "Ugh, I've been cold for four days."

"You've been outside for four days?" Kamiya's eyes widen. "What have you two been up to?"

"We had our reasons for coming up this way." Misao says it chirpily, easily, as if they've been up to something mischievous rather than illegal.

Kamiya raises an eyebrow, looking between the two of them before accepting the answer. "I'd have had the bath ready if I'd known you were coming. If you want, we can heat it up now?"

"That'd be fantastic." Misao pauses, then looks at him. "Aoshi-sama, why don't you go before me?"

He says nothing. If she wishes to cede the first bath, he won't gainsay her.

Misao flashes a smile in Kamiya's direction. "Besides, I kind of wanted to talk to you."

* * *

iv.

The truth of the matter is that Aoshi finds the weight of the debt he owes Himura uncomfortable. How does one repay the return of one's own mind and will to live? His involvement in the Yukishiro affair could not even begin to repay what Himura has done for him, for the Oniwabanshuu.

Himura would claim that friendship is its own reward. But friendship to those outside the Oniwabanshuu is no easier for Aoshi than obligation.

Aoshi upends a bucket over his head to rinse away the last of the suds, then ducks into the scalding hot bath. It's his first soak in over a week. The heat melts away some of the tension accumulating in his back — though not all; never all.

He emerges from the bath house to find Myoujin losing a spar with Kamiya, while Himura and Misao watch. Misao is smiling. Her eyes sparkle with her mirth, turned a darker shade of blue by the last light of early evening.

"Hey, watch your feet!" She calls to Myoujin, and smiles wider when Aoshi steps more fully into the room. He allows his expression to soften for a moment as he recalls the number of times Hannya told her to watch her footwork. From her expression, she must be remembering it too.

At length, Kamiya taps Myoujin on knee and shoulder with her bokken. She's gentle, but the strikes get her point across.

"You've definitely got room to improve on the strikes. The blade catch is useful, but you don't want to fall into the trap of using the same technique in every situation." 

"I know, I know. Or else you end up like Henya." Myoujin rolls his shoulders, apparently sore from the advanced practice. Then he grins. "I call first bath, ugly."

"Brat," Kamiya replies, but there's no heat in her tone. She sinks onto the floor beside Misao, smiling. "You ready for that bath after Yahiko?"

* * *

v.

Misao drags Kamiya away, most likely to grab yukata and haori, the first instant Myoujin leaves the bath. They laugh about something as they go, but Aoshi is listening for subtle signs of distress from either of them, not to their conversation. He watches Misao disappear into the house, then turns his attention to Himura.

Himura takes a long, slow sip of tea. "I take it the weather slowed your trip from the village Misao needed to visit, that I do."

"Aa."

"I can't imagine you would kill near Misao-dono without need, that I cannot. Does either of you need help?"

If he were given to such expression, he might almost laugh. He has essentially murdered one man and condemned another to a life of terror and lies. And here Himura — who must never touch a blade again — offers him help? It's almost too ridiculous. Distantly, he's aware that his hands have begun to ache.

"Only a place to rest quietly for a while," he says, softly. "Misao needs time. And I should not be seen."

"You planned someone's death." Himura says it in a flat tone. It reminds Aoshi for a chilling moment of the tone Himura had once used with Takeda Kanryuu: _Are you coming down, or am I coming up?_

Aoshi does not say that the situation is more complicated than Himura makes it sound. The situation _is_ complicated, but it condenses quite easily into Himura's version. So he says nothing at all.

After the silence stretches, Himura says: "You would not murder a man in cold blood with Misao-dono beside you, that you would not."

But flat and certain though the words may be, the tone asks for confirmation.

"No," he says, and is almost startled at the force of his own voice. 

Himura seems to relax at his reaction. "Then you're yourself, that you are, and I can believe that whatever you have done, you did so for good reasons."

"You were worried I...?"

The former Battousai shakes his head. "Worried for anything but your and Misao-dono's saftey? No." A crook of a haunted smile. "But it never hurts to be very sure, that it certainly doesn't."

Aoshi spends a lot of time understanding Himura all too well, but there are moments in their uncomfortable friendship that Aoshi could swear he will never understand Himura so long as he lives. This is one of them.

* * *

vi.

Misao does not rejoin them immediately after her bath, though Kamiya seeks them out. A crease appears between Kamiya's eyebrows when she first sees him, but as she sits next to Himura — who seems completely at peace in Aoshi's company — she relaxes.

Misao told her.

Aoshi excuses himself to look for her. He pads silently through Kamiya's home, listening for the quick beat of Misao's heart. He finds her in their shared room, already laying out blankets for a bed. He shuts the door and watches her. 

She looks to him when she finishes. After a moment, he joins her. He doesn't say anything; something is bothering her. But she doesn't talk about it. Instead she shares a few pieces of gossip she's picked up from Kamiya. He listens, cataloguing details, though he knows they're just a means for Misao to fill the silence,

They lie down, He rests a hand on her back again, allows her to settle so that her head is pillowed on his chest. She shifts as she settles, trying to find a place for her arm she thinks he will allow; the thought amuses him a little.

They take several minutes to find some way to fit together that satisfies his need to be able to get to his weapons and won't leave either of them stiff-jointed when they wake. It is not until they have finally found a comfortable position that she speaks of what bothers her.

The words come out abruptly, her voice faintly drowsy: "Kaoru-san didn't understand."

He goes still. After a moment, he asks, "What did she say?"

Misao sighs against his chest. He fights the temptation to place his hand on the back of her head. "It's not that she said anything. She wasn't _cruel_ about it. She just... didn't understand."

"Aa," he says. Despite the flat tone, it can act as a leading question for Misao.

Undaunted as usual by his preference for monosyllables, Misao adds, "She didn't even tell me that killing someone for revenge is wrong. She just seemed a little confused." Misao pauses a moment, corrects herself to: "Or maybe unsure. Like part of her was saying that it's never okay to kill, and the rest of her thought she understood why he needed killing."

"You think she did not?"

"I think she was startled by how intense the feelings were." Misao falls slient here. He can imagine her half-rueful, half-amused smile. As if she's quietly saying: _Since when have my feelings not been intense?_ "Did you know, she's a year older than me and she's never even really been harassed?"

He's silent. That it seems so impossible to Misao that a woman could live her life in peace... Is this Oniwabanshuu training? Kunoichi cynicism finally taking hold? Or have her own experiences led her to believe a life without male harrassment is some kind of myth?

His hands begin to ache again.

"She's been attacked, of course. But it's been because she's connected to Himura or because she owns property that other people want. It's all been... differerent for her." Misao is quiet for a long, long time before she finally asks in a near-whisper: "Why couldn't it have been different for me?"

He has no answer for her. He moves his hand from her back to the back of her head.

Part of him wonders if Himura is having a similar conversation with Kamiya.

"I just wanted to know if I'd made the right choice." Misao says. "Poor Kaoru-san. Everything she teaches means she should tell us we were wrong, but she can't make herself do that. Because she thinks we might have been right."

Of course. As the assistant master and only living instructor of the Kamiya-Kasshin style, Kamiya would be expected to exemplify the values and philosophy of her school. Misao has placed her in a position that makes both the obligations of a friend and the obligations of the dojo master mutually exclusive.

He says nothing of the matter, only gently brushes his knuckles along the back of her head.

They're quiet a while before Misao speaks again.

"If I had asked you not to kill him — and I'm not saying I didn't want you to kill him; I did — but if I'd asked you to quietly take me home without hurting anyone, would you have?"

The impossible question. He freezes, half convinced he'd have an easier time smiling and meaning it. Would he have abandoned the justice Tanaka Ichiro and Tanaka Tadashi so richly, richly deserved, if Misao had asked it of him?

But would he have permitted Misao to travel home alone? Would he have abandoned her in Kyoto, breaking one obligation to uphold a lesser and hurting them both in the bargain?

"Aa," he says, softly. She relaxes against him. He waits a moment before adding, "But I would have killed him eventually."

"What? Why?"

"He lived two days from Tokyo, in a dying farming town. He would have ventured here."

Misao is silent a moment. He can practically hear the pieces clicking into place in her mind. The women of that restaurant Kamiya favors and other civilians in Himura's circle of protection might have been at risk. With Himura unable to fight, the task would have fallen to Aoshi regardless.

"Oh. Then... good, I guess." She gives a soft, sleepy sigh. "I know I've told you, but even if Kaoru-san or Himura didn't approve... I think it was the right thing."

"Aa," he says.

A few moments later, she is gone. Merely a warm weight on his chest, un-blooded hands curled against his sides.

* * *

vii.

A day later, while Kamiya is away sparring at another dojo — apparently trying to drum up students or support for her own — Misao drags out the uniform he'd worn when he killed Tanaka Tadashi.

She washes it again. The earlier soak helped, but above the basin, the water dyes her skin a rusty yellow. The stain goes all the way up to her elbows. He almost shudders at the sight of her hands dripping second-hand blood.

He almost stops her. But he doesn't. If Misao does not want these events — her assault, his own actions — to follow them home, then so far as he is able, he will make sure they don't. In that case, better that he or Misao do it _here_ , amongst those who are aware of what he has done, than that they give the lie away in Kyoto.

The day is cold but sunny. The pieces of dark fabric dry before Kamiya returns. But surely she can guess why Misao might be stitching pieces of an Oniwaban uniform not her own back together.

It casts a pall over what might have been a lazy, friendly evening.

* * *

viii.

In the end, they stay in Tokyo only long enough for him to buy train tickets. 

Misao and Kamiya are pleasant to each other, but Misao's glances flicker toward him and Himura, as if wondering why she and Kamiya must be so distant when he and Himura are unchanged. Himura is placid as ever, apparently untroubled by the invisible shoals that have suddenly separated Misao from the ideals he's comfortable with.

Himura has always understood that there are a multitude of paths to absolution. A multitude of ways to be ethical.

But there's a divide between Misao and Kamiya, thrown into sharp relief at the difference in lived experience. They'll cross it, he's sure of that. He still cannot help but watch their pleasantries with a sense of unease.

It should not be like this.

How can it be otherwise?

* * *

ix.

The change unsettles him, Worse, Misao seems to have stumbled upon an issue he can offer no aid in. 

It isn't his place to intervene — nor does he have the words to do so even if it were his place — so he holds his tongue while Misao and Kamiya part. He bows to Himura and Kamiya, then steps aboard the train. He doesn't speak until they reach their car, though he listens to Misao's chatter with a distant sense of amusement.

When she pauses, trying to find something — perhaps anything — else to focus on, he places a hand on her shoulder. He's still careful with the touch, gentle. He suspects he always will be; the last thing he wants is for her to fear him, even for a moment.

She places her hand on top of his.

"It still troubles you?"

"I think a little bit of it always will. But it's easier now." She half turns, looking up to catch his eyes, and smiles. He receives the sudden impression that this little glimpse of joy is for his benefit — intended to be seen and known, intended to reassure.

He frowns. He wants honesty of her, not reassurances.

She sees his frown, and her smiles slips for a bare instant before warmth touches her eyes, making them glint with a sliver of humor. "I hear time helps, if you let it. And things have been getting better for a while now."

* * *

x.

There are questions both of them could ask but don't. How he knows what he knows — whether he's suffered as she and so many others have suffered — why she finds his touch comforting, why she sleeps easiest in his arms.

Neither mentions what they must do now. The Aoi-ya cell will be curious about where they could have gone, what they could have done. And surely this new habit of sleeping beside each other cannot escape the notice of the others.

Let them notice. Let them wonder. He will not compromise on this matter: he has found absolution and peace, has laid his ghosts to rest — even if they will never rest truly quietly — and Misao has found a way to move on, a way to silence her own ghosts. 

Misao smiles when Kyoto comes into view. She rests a hand on his arm, which he allows.

He tenses his hands into fists, then relaxes them. They don't ache. 

There is no use in turning back time.

* * *

Josephine  
You're so good to me  
And I know  
It ain't easy  
—The Wallflowers, "Josephine"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for these two and this adventure, at least for now. Where Aoshi and Misao go from here is up to them, I think. 
> 
> A thousand thanks to Leviathanmirror for holding my hand and correcting my characterization where necessary. She's been my touchstone for sanity with this project. The unsung not-quite-beta reader.
> 
> And thanks to everyone who read this far. I can't say I've given you a joyful or pleasant story, but it was important to me, and I'm glad we shared it.


End file.
